Clippy lives on!

[Nicole Alderman]

Some of you might remember Clippy (and the cat, dog, wizard, etc, that you could switch to) on Microsoft Word back in the late 90s. Well, some kind soul wrote the java script for Clippy and some of the other Microsoft Assistants, so they can be added to any website:

Add Clippy or his friends to any website for instant nostalgia. Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries. Naturally, we decided to combine the two.

During lunch a few weeks ago we thought it would be cool to have a fully functional Clippy that can be embedded in any website. We fiddled around with it and we had an unexpected amount of fun laughing at Clippy and his antics.

We started thinking about the developers' state of mind when they created Clippy. Did they think it would really help people? It seems that Microsoft really believed that Assistants were the way of the future.

We built Clippy.js over the weekend to share that fun and whimsy with everyone, and to remind people to try new and risky things, even when they seem silly.

Here's the website: https://www.smore.com/clippy-js

[Campbell Ritchie]

Nicole Alderman wrote:. . . Clippy . . . can be added to any website . . .

. . . and has anybody taken out a contract on whoever wrote that JS?

[Peter Rooke]

Maybe as a front end for this new Co-Pilot code assistant thing.  
Fair bit of discussion about the merits of this.  Now imagine the annoyance if your IDE then pops up a clippy offering to help "improve" your code - oh please no.        

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Hi Clippy! Nice to see you *not in Office*.

[Paul Clapham]

Peter Rooke wrote:Now imagine the annoyance if your IDE then pops up a clippy offering to help "improve" your code - oh please no.

"It looks like you're trying to code a pizza ordering system. Can I make some suggestions?"