Kid Pix runs in your browser, with hidden keyboard tricks still tucked behind its tools

Kid Pix has another trick hiding behind the button you thought you understood. The browser recreation keeps a drawing playground’s appetite for experimentation, including modifier keys that change tool behavior. An adult can return for nostalgia and immediately discover that a keyboard still knows how to make them feel underqualified for the crayons.

The project README calls JSKIDPIX an HTML-and-JavaScript reimplementation of the public-domain 1989 original. Its version label points back to 2021; this is a place to revisit, with no need to pretend the rediscovery is a launch announcement. The useful news for someone who remembers the program is that the playground is a link away.

The live canvas puts the tools in front of you, while the README offers an unusually relaxed manual policy: “there’s no guide”. There is, thankfully, a wiki for the grownups. Its keyboard notes document shortcuts for changing the current palette, stepping to the next color and picking a random one, so experimentation need not mean randomly clicking until the browser fills with happy accidents.

The letter c changes the color set; n advances the selected color; r picks one at random. There is a small hidden consequence to switching palettes: some tools draw their random choices from the current set. The palette therefore affects more than the next deliberate stroke. A picture taking a peculiar turn may have followed a rule you changed without realizing how far it reached.

Shift enlarges many effects, according to the README, and modifier keys can be combined. The wiki also documents Ctrl with the spray-paint button to reveal a shape submenu. That makes a useful starting experiment: keep the canvas and palette steady, change one modifier, and watch what the tool does differently. A small drawing can become an informal instruction manual without becoming homework (please, no homework).

Import and save controls make it possible to carry an image into or out of the playground. The wiki says an image can be dragged onto the canvas, s saves a file and Ctrl+Z undoes an action. Holding Alt with the save-disk button crops and flattens transparency. That last command changes the result, so an exploratory copy is the sensible place to discover exactly how it affects a picture you care about.

For a returning user, the interesting contrast is between a button’s obvious action and the extra behavior available when a key is held. A modern interface might spread those choices across a row of panels. Here the invitation is to try the thing and see the result, which makes the undocumented discovery part of the entertainment.

The wiki itself calls its hidden-feature documentation a work in progress. Nobody should confuse a list of known controls with a complete promise about every browser and tool. There may still be a combination worth finding after the obvious brush has had its turn, and the canvas is a considerably friendlier place to make a mess than a real keyboard covered in paint.

Crayon you believe that still works.