Search sites have made Halloween a major spectator sport for online viewers in past years, and this year is no exception. While we’re waiting to see what Google has in mind with its Doodles, we already know what Microsoft has planned. Its Bing Halloween page is now live and available to view in eight countries (US, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, and China) It will be live on the Bing front door on Monday. With haunted ghosts and sound effects, it’s the complete Halloween package.
Bing Senior Program Manager Sage Kitamorn commented: “The Bing image of the day is a gift to users every day. On special days like Halloween, Bing fans expect something … extra. We usually begin gathering ideas several months in advance — it’s a delight to work with a team that blends creative and engineering passion. Since Halloween falls on a Monday this year, many people will be celebrating all weekend. We’re excited to share our Haunted Graveyard as an early treat.”
There are some tech specs you need to be aware of to make this one work. Your Bing page may already have these presets, but if it doesn’t, it won’t display properly. Click the wrench on the top right to access page settings. Under “Homepage,” make sure “videos and panoramas” is set to play automatically. Of course, if you’d rather have a still image, you can choose that option as well. There are other settings as well; you can choose a large image for widescreen monitors, and you can enable or disable the news carousel and menu bar.
You can peruse and in some cases download past Bing images for desktop use. Here is a clip of the Halloween page from last year:
