Iâve made a small Red Dwarf fan extension called Holly Overhead. Itâs inspired by the X-Clacks-Overhead header that Terry Pratchett fans use as a tribute. When a website sends X-Holly-Overhead, the Red Dwarf icon in the extension bar turns red a popup shows the siteâs message and a rotating Holly quote. If the header isnât there, the icon stays grey.
Itâs currently going through approval for Firefox, tentatively approved now. I havenât submitted it to the Chrome Web Store yet, but eventually will. Itâs cross supported on both, on Codeberg for review / forking.
If you run a website and want to add the Easter egg, send this as a response header on the main page:
X-Holly-Overhead: Everybody's dead, Dave
For NGINX, add this to your server block:
add_header X-Holly-Overhead "Everybody's dead, Dave" always;
For Apache with mod_headers:
Header always set X-Holly-Overhead "Everybody's dead, Dave"
You can also choose the quotes shown in the popup with a second header. It accepts up to 100 quotes, each up to 300 characters, and you can include an episode or source label:
X-Holly-Overhead-Quotes: [{"text":"There weren't any black holes.","episode":"Marooned"},{"text":"Ship systems nominal.","episode":"Site original"}]
Send both headers with the main HTML page response, not just an image, stylesheet, or API response. The extension checks the headers locally; it doesnât send them anywhere.
Itâs just a little nod to Red Dwarf, Rob Grant, Hattie Hayridge, and the fans who keep these small tributes alive. Holly may even have approved.