http://#(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

February 25, 2015 11:49 AM

Put animated ASCII art in your browser's address bar
posted by Going To Maine (21 comments total)

...what sorcery is this?

┬─┬ノ(ಠ_ಠノ)
posted by leotrotsky at 11:53 AM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Javascript/HTML sorcery is my favorite kind of sorcery.

Mostly because it's the safe sort of sorcery, compared to the other options.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:02 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

'pewpew' is kind of awesome.
posted by mazola at 12:06 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wow. o.O
posted by djeo at 12:10 PM on February 25, 2015

That is all sorts of Apple ][ Beagle Bros type of awesome.
posted by D.C. at 12:31 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Teach me how to do this. Please.
posted by zix at 12:32 PM on February 25, 2015

It looks like a javascript developer discovered the location.hash variable.
posted by surazal at 12:38 PM on February 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

Awesome.
posted by brundlefly at 12:40 PM on February 25, 2015

Lord. You get a "frame by frame" in your browser history.
posted by brundlefly at 12:48 PM on February 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

Doesn't work in Safari (It truncates the URL to domain name when the address bar is not focused, and the script won't modify it when it is focused).

> It looks like a javascript developer discovered the location.hash variable.

Yup. Basically.

> Teach me how to do this. Please.

Off the top of my head, something like:

var counter = 0, verbiage = ['first','second','third'];
function foo() {
    window.location.hash = verbiage[counter];
    counter++;
    counter = (counter===verbiage.length) ? 0 : counter;
    setTimeout(foo,100);
}
foo();

But probably better.
posted by ardgedee at 12:49 PM on February 25, 2015

this is going revolutionize incremental games.
posted by boo_radley at 12:55 PM on February 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Huh. Nothing....
posted by Sintram at 1:12 PM on February 25, 2015

I was not OK with this until I realized the # mark makes the animated bits a comment, which sorta makes it OK, I guess.
posted by straight at 1:50 PM on February 25, 2015

This is actually Half-Life 3.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:53 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is the most gorgeous thing I have seen since <blink><marquee></blink></marquee>
posted by frimble at 2:07 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Heh. This reminds me of the PLATO system back at UIUC. There were misc and sundry character control commands you could embed within a string that would "play" as the string was displayed on the terminal. I can't recall ever seeing it anywhere else, though. As I recall, it was one of those things that could be really fun - but could also be really annoying.
posted by doctor tough love at 2:09 PM on February 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK, here's a little background on what's happening in the link:

In javascript, there's is a stored variable called location.hash. If you go to a URL and you see a "#" in the address with something after that, that part is called the hash. In javascript, you can both retrieve and set your own hash arbitrarily by reading to and writing to that variable, and in most browsers you get the effects you see at the link automagically when you do that.

Normally, this "feature" used used by AJAX-heavy applications as a way to control how the web application/page behaves when someone uses the back/forward buttons (every time you change the hash, a new entry is generated in your browser history). It is, incidentally, the only non-HTML5 way of changing the URL via javascript without doing an explicit page load, as well. Someone just used this functionality and turned it around into a clever hack (I think the pewpew game is quite ingenious, BTW). But other than that, there's nothing all that magical going on here.

Thank you for letting me suck the magic and joy out of this post. Please carry on. :^)
posted by surazal at 3:07 PM on February 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

NO!

You took away my blink tag, and I don't want to play with you ever again.

stomps, feet, slams door
posted by BlueHorse at 3:09 PM on February 25, 2015

BlueHorse: "NO!

You took away my blink tag, and I don't want to play with you ever again.

stomps, feet, slams door"

We can bring it back in the address bar
posted by boo_radley at 4:03 PM on February 25, 2015

BlueHorse: Blink and Marquee live on, even if they aren't in their original form
posted by surazal at 4:20 PM on February 25, 2015

♫ Well in the first bar, things were type-&-click / But In this bar, things were animated-&-slick. ♫
posted by Going To Maine at 1:18 AM on February 27, 2015