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Idle Games

A Game Played In the URL Bar 156

Posted by samzenpus from the wasting-time dept.
Kilrah_il writes "Whether you think it is useful or useless, you can't ignored the sheer cool geekiness of a game played entirely in the URL bar. From the article: '... While getting lost in a three dimensional virtual world amongst increasingly thoughtful plot and character development may be an adequate pastime for some, the only new title the gaming world should be talking about is URL Hunter, an experimental keyboard-character based game played entirely in your browser's URL bar.'"
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A Game Played In the URL Bar More

A Game Played In the URL Bar

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  • Amusing for a few seconds, this uses JS?
    Disappointed that he didn't incorporate a blink tag somehow into the url bar though :(

    • Re:Hmm... MOAR! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by netsharc ( 195805 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @04:54PM (#35474208)

      That would be easy...

      Since all this does is modify the anchor part of the URL (the part after the #) via Javascript, which is basically what Gawker sites (e.g. Gizmodo) do when you click on a story on their right side navigation bar, and using a JavaScript timer to make the a's move periodically, he could incorporate a period where the whole thing disappears.

      But, fun stuff. I don't look forward to the SEO & advertising monkeys selling "ad space direct on the user's URL BAR!"

      • I don't look forward to the SEO & advertising monkeys selling "ad space direct on the user's URL BAR!"

        It would be a waste of money for them. Most non-tech people I know do not ever look at the address bar. And most tech people would probably protest the ad out of principle.

        Heck, most non-technical people type in complete urls into google and bing without even thinking of using the url bar.

    • Amusing for a few seconds, this uses JS?

      Yep.

      Here, I wrote a JavaScript: URL that creates a Tetris game at the top of whatever page you're on.

      URL Tetris [ubuntu.com]

      Protip: Create a Bookmark, set the Location of the bookmark to the tetris code... Click the bookmark and play tetris on any web page.

      • (please excuse the self-reply)
        In case anyone wanted to see the source code:
        Here's the unencoded version of the URL Tetris [ubuntu.com].

        • Nice work! Thanks for posting the code.

          • Nice work! Thanks for posting the code.

            Thanks for playing.

            P.S. I didn't hard code the game size... At the start of the source you can change the variables to create whatever size game you want:
            w=10;h=20;s=18;ds=2
            w = Number of cell wide.
            h = Number of cells tall.
            s = Size of each cell in pixels. ds = Drop Slide (Number of drop cycles to wait after the piece has touched down before locking the piece in place).

            Just edit those before you press Enter. If you make the game too big and can't close it, hit the [Esc] (Boss Key).

            P.P.S. The

      • That was a lot of fun. This version of Tetris was not stingy on the line pieces :)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Come on, do you really expect the intelligent people of slashdot to paste a highly-obfuscated blob of javascript from an untrusted party into their url bar?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          do you really expect the intelligent people of slashdot to paste a highly-obfuscated blob of javascript from an untrusted party into their url bar?

          Yes, because JS in a browser is sandboxed. It's not like running a shell/Perl/Python script with full user privileges.

        • i did :D

        • Come on, do you really expect the intelligent people of slashdot to paste a highly-obfuscated blob of javascript from an untrusted party into their url bar?

          Luckily, the code didn't work in Opera at work on Windows. Phew!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Belial6 ( 794905 )
          Could you explain what risk these intelligent people would be avoiding that they are not subjecting themselves to every time the click on link to an unknown site on Google?

          To the point, what risk does Javascript in the URL bar pose that Javascript in the page not pose?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cvtan ( 752695 )
        What, no music? This plays well and I can't believe I pasted something unknown into my browser. If you can do this, certainly you can fix the gray text on gray background on Slashdot...

      • It's now been tested in Chromium.

        The q(') key moves the piece to the right. The enter key drops the piece. The space bar will also drop the piece if there's nowhere to scroll down on the page behind it. The arrow keys do nothing unless there's somewhere to scroll the page left or right, in which case they do.

        It's currently unplayable on Chromium due to these issues, but it's still a pretty impressive demo.

        Chromium version is 11.0.696.3 (dev) Mandriva 2010.2 for the record. I get the same results from Google

      • Impressive. Hat tipped in your direction, Sir.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )

      YOU CAN'T IGNORED!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AP31R0N ( 723649 )

      Amusing for a few seconds. Does this use JS?

      Question marks mark questions.

  • 4 animals in 23 seconds. Woohooo!

  • Better than... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:17PM (#35473404)

    Dragon Age 2 by far.

  • History (Score:5, Informative)

    by DamienRBlack ( 1165691 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:17PM (#35473406)
    Well that filled up my history nice and good.

  • Just don't try using the back button (Score:5, Funny)

    by nedlohs ( 1335013 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:18PM (#35473420)

    to get back to slashdot.

  • Naysayers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by omfgnosis ( 963606 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:30PM (#35473510)

    Is it a good game? Not really. The gameplay is pretty awful, and the concept is naturally pretty limited. But it's clever and unusual, and highlights something that is both useful and not widespread enough (the ability to set navigation without leaving a loaded page) as well as something that is of questionable utility but novel (manipulation of an interface element that's currently guaranteed to exist in any desktop user agent to act as a presentation element).

    People can dismiss it, as they have done and surely will do until this article falls below the fold, but it's pretty neat conceptually. It's not earth-shattering. Just neat.

    • "(manipulation of an interface element that's currently guaranteed to exist in any desktop user agent to act as a presentation element)"

      Well, almost. It's not there in full-screen mode browsers, and I know that some of those internet kiosks hide it. Mobile phone and tablet browsers too, to save screenspace. But it's usually there.

      • Apart from full-screen desktop browsers, none of your list are desktop browsers. Exception noted though.

        • My intended point is that, with the rise of mobile browsing, there is more diversity. A site shouldn't just assume the browser supports flash any more, or that it has a conventional mouse, or even an address bar.

          • I specified desktop browsers in anticipation of that point. :)

            And while a conventional site shouldn't assume any of those things, and more (eg. the site in question assumes a keyboard which rules a bunch of mobile devices out), that's not new. A conventional—ie. informational—website should remain functional regardless of the hardware and software interfaces involved, and this has been the accessibility rallying cry since long before there was even such a thing as a "mobile browser".

            That said, t

  • This is a new game! (Score:3)

    by Joe U ( 443617 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:31PM (#35473520) Homepage Journal

    This is a different game compared to the round of 'get around the filtering software' usually played in the URL bar.

    I usually win more interesting stuff with that game.

  • is the real game being played.

  • Evil (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is pretty evil to your history.

    Also don't accidentally hit ESC multiple times when starting a new game.

  • Don't work.

  • I don't even have an URL bar. :'(

  • Protip (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nethenson ( 1093205 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:53PM (#35473716) Journal
    Use history.replaceState [mozilla.org] to avoid clogging people's browser history and effectively disabling their back buttons.
  • This is a great example to show your non-tech friends what can be done with the URL bar if they visit the "wrong" site.

    Make 'em paranoid - but entertain them at the same time - love it!

  • Game on IE9 vs. FF4? (Score:4, Funny)

    by hduff ( 570443 ) <hoytduff @ g m a i l .com> on Sunday March 13, 2011 @04:26PM (#35473986) Homepage Journal

    Can we get the IE9 and FF4 benchmarks for this? It's important.

  • Does Not Work (Score:5, Funny)

    by hduff ( 570443 ) <hoytduff @ g m a i l .com> on Sunday March 13, 2011 @04:28PM (#35474006) Homepage Journal

    in lynx.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @04:34PM (#35474060)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Also, at risk of being called a punctuation Nazi, I am not very impressed with a website that describes itself using an apostrophe to indicate plural ("a's").

    This is one of the simplest rules in English, as such things go, and I simply have doubts about people who get it so wrong.

    • Re:(A) Clever. (B) Boring. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 13, 2011 @05:02PM (#35474296)

      Nope, that is in fact the standard convention for the plurals of lowercase letters:

      http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/

      I won't call you a punctuation nazi, because Nazis at least made an effort to know their own rules.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 )

        "I won't call you a punctuation nazi, because Nazis at least made an effort to know their own rules."

        I have. You are wrong, and Purdue has its head up its ass. Here are just a few other references:

        Grammar Book [grammarbook.com]

        Your Dictionary [yourdictionary.com]

        Davis School District K-12 usage guide [k12.ut.us]

        Georgia Southern University Writing Center [georgiasouthern.edu]

        In Wikipedia's entry on it [wikipedia.org], the mentions of using it for plurals lack citations. But the refutations of those usages do have citations.

        The vast majority of evidence and authority is on my side. You lose. Try again.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Lucidus ( 681639 )
          Rule 6 from your Grammar Book explicitly uses the apostrophe to show the plural of a lower case letter (i's). Your own references refute you.

          • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

            by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 )
            I was being facetious when I wrote "try again", but even though you did, you are wrong again. Rule 6 deals with possession, not plural.

          • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

            by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 )
            And by the way, Rule 6 also deals with compound nouns. Lowercase letters are not compound nouns.

          • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

            by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 )
            However, looking again, I see that Rule 11 does give an example using a lower case "i", even though the rule mentions only that you do not use them with capital letters, and does not mention lowercase at all.

            Even so, that is only one person. All other authorities I have found except Purdue disagree with you.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Yeah, Rule 11 of your own reference explicitly contradicts you. The Wikipedia article does also: "It is generally acceptable to use apostrophes to show plurals of single lower-case letters, such as be sure to dot your i's and cross your t's." The other references simply don't deal with the issue. I would say that you are clearly wrong here, and you should, as they say, stop digging. If you continue to disagree, please write a sentence using the plural forms of the following letters: a, i, and u. Do you se

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Lucidus ( 681639 )
              Oops, I did intend to refer to Rule 11, not Rule 6. So Grammar Book, Purdue, Wikipedia, and the books Eats, Shoots & Leaves and The Well-Tempered Sentence (currently on my desk) all agree with using the apostrophe with lower-case letters to indicate plurals. For upper-case letters, and numerals, usage is currently mixed: formerly, the apostrophe was considered correct; now, it is usually omitted except when this would cause confusion. However, the New York Times, for one example, still uses the apostrop

              • "So Grammar Book, Purdue, Wikipedia, and the books Eats, Shoots & Leaves and The Well-Tempered Sentence (currently on my desk) all agree..."

                You seem to have had the same trouble actually reading what I wrote that the other respondent above had.

                Despite outward appearances, Wikipedia does not agree. The statements that agree are all marked citation needed. The statements that authorities disagree with that position actually have references.

                So -- if you bother to read carefully -- Wikipedia actually agrees with me.

                Eats, Shoots, & Leaves was written by a journalist, not an English professor, school, any other organization with some cla

        • I see that somebody who disagrees pulled out their "troll" wand and cast a spell.

          Whoever you are, "troll" is not an acceptable substitute for "I disagree."

  • For some reason (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday March 13, 2011 @05:11PM (#35474352)

    Not totally sure why, but that reminds me of a very old Star Trek game we used to play on PDP 11 computers.

  • I did a "stateless" CGI othello game back in like '94 that stored the game state in the URL. The difference is that I also displayed a board on the screen via HTML generated on the fly. Automatic reload in X seconds was used to have to computer make its response move. The back button worked too. Of course tons of people on /. did similar things back then too.

  • I could see a really cool use of this on news sites- a scrolling ticker at the top of the page.

  • It's called "change the numbers to find more porn."

    • Looks Way Better than "change the numbers to get MS points"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cyxxon ( 773198 )
      The fun thing about that game is, you never even know how many levels there are! Also, you don't have to beat a level to proceed to the next one...

  • Reminds me of a game I played in uni where there was a clue as to the next URL on each page. A quick google didn't find it, but I'm pretty sure the name had something to do with being a hacker (coz who else knows how to use an address bar?)

  • I made a similar thing in 2002, but even more limited because it used the one line of a grey pushbutton as both the input and the output of the game!
    http://kirkjerk.com/features/gb.html [kirkjerk.com]

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