[HN Gopher] The 88x31 GIF Collection
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The 88x31 GIF Collection
Author : kaeruct
Score : 328 points
Date : 2021-06-14 08:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cyber.dabamos.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (cyber.dabamos.de)
| xwdv wrote:
| Would it be better to store these as binary blobs in a database?
| bbrks wrote:
| For those who may be wondering why 88x31px?
|
| https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-odd-size-of-88x31-become-a...
| bluedino wrote:
| >> At this point in time the largest provider of personal
| hosting was GeoCities. In order to improve brand awareness,
| they required that all free hosting users have a link back to
| GeoCities somewhere on the page. They helpfully provided
| default banners for these links at - you guessed it - the
| dimensions of 88x31
|
| But that doesn't really explain why 83x31 was chosen by
| Geocities
| sverhagen wrote:
| Still not explaining "why", but Wikipedia suggests that it
| was part of a list of standardized sizes, this one being a
| "micro bar":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_banner#Standard_sizes
| sedatk wrote:
| It probably became a standard _after_ it got popular.
| donio wrote:
| My guess is that the creator of the first image didn't have
| an exact size in mind so when they were doodling in the
| bitmap editor it just happened to come out to that size and
| was trimmed accordingly. And then future images were made to
| fit.
| zamadatix wrote:
| "why one place picked something" doesn't require special
| reasoning like "why everyone picked something" does.
| bluedino wrote:
| I know, but I was hoping for something like "you could fit
| 4 of the buttons in a browser window, on a 640x480 screen"
| (the standard of the time)
| jandrese wrote:
| It fit the font they chose. The designer probably didn't care
| how many pixels were in the image so long as it looked ok on
| their screen.
| tpmx wrote:
| https://neonaut.neocities.org/cyber/88x31.html
|
| _Why 88 by 31, anyway? Who started this? A Quora poster
| speculates GeoCities started this trend when they provided
| 88x31 GeoCities buttons for their users, but the contemporary
| source she references actually says the trend was started by
| Netscape._
| qwertox wrote:
| I also associate that button very strongly with Netscape. I
| was surprised to not see one which had the Netscape logo on
| it, only a "Netscape Now" button was there among other "Now"
| buttons.
|
| I wonder if the 31px height was from the height of the logo
| on the right of the address bar, the one which was animated.
| I don't know which height it was, but it could match.
| flixic wrote:
| Seeing Netflix in Page 3 is disorienting. Reminds you that it's
| actually a pretty old company.
| maxpert wrote:
| Ahhhh the good old days! Takes me back to dream weaver and flash
| era.
| neiman wrote:
| The forefather of NFTs.
| treesknees wrote:
| I still have a collection of these 88x31 GIFs from my own
| websites back in the day. I never ran anything worth sharing with
| anyone else nowadays but it was pretty fun as a kid trying to
| build up services and hosting. There was a whole network of
| people trading "affiliate" banners, linking back and forth to
| each other's websites. Good times!
| Minor49er wrote:
| I'd be more nostalgiac for these if Neocities pages didn't
| continue the trend of creating and sharing them. The bottom of
| this page offers a common example:
|
| https://personally-comfy.neocities.org/
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| When I see Linux advocacy from those days it's so amusing to me
| in retrospect: In this case, Linux 2.0 now, with Tux dropping
| onto an old Windows 95 style logo. I remember GNU/Linux advocacy
| in that era as based around free software ideas, but when I look
| back at that time, there was actually a lot of ironic(?)
| superiority.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Today's dose of memberberries.
| GIFnotGIF wrote:
| nice!
| crocal wrote:
| It's so useless it's needed.
| jordemort wrote:
| Some of these seem anachronistic; for example, there are couple
| for (and one against!) Discord. According to Wikipedia, Discord
| was released in 2015, which seems long after peak 88x31 GIF.
| pcan77 wrote:
| I miss this version of the internet :( Everything is so boring
| now.
| ExtraServings wrote:
| They should have built the site in Tailwind...
| [deleted]
| Nadya wrote:
| It's harder to find but it still exists. The hardest part is
| finding the retroscape <communities> rather than
| individuals/people. For example, I can browse a lot of retro-
| ish early 2000's design sites on Neocities but it is difficult
| to call it much of a community. Same thing with mmm.page.
|
| https://neocities.org/browse and recently-posted-to-HN
| https://mmm.page/xh.inspiring
|
| I'd love to find (or even make) a community for people who
| still enjoy the aesthetic of the amateur-crafted web.
| have_faith wrote:
| Try wiby.org, hit 'surprise me' a few times.
| grae_QED wrote:
| Go to https://www.wiby.me
|
| Its a search engine that only indexes minimalist websites.
| Everything on there looks like its from the 90's.
| xnx wrote:
| For anyone nostalgic for this type of old/weird internet, you
| should check out TikTok before it becomes too
| commercial/formalized. Still a lot of weird/random/raw stuff on
| there.
| unicornporn wrote:
| I'm sincerely hoping that was a sarcastic comment.
| tomcooks wrote:
| So many questions about that "Anti code and run"
|
| http://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/anticodeandrun2.gif
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| Why? Do you like writing code that causes your computer to
| explode and catch fire so you have to run away from it?
| uncomputation wrote:
| This page is a great example to show the benefits of caching
| eat_veggies wrote:
| It's so wonderful seeing the images slowly pop into existence
| like that!
| dmd wrote:
| What do you mean? They all appeared at once for me.
| treve wrote:
| Would love to compare this to a HTTP/2 version!
| 101008 wrote:
| Oh I wish I could go back. I remember that these were used a lot
| for Affiliates links in the sidebar, if you had a niche website.
| Then, they evolved to a 88x16 size, or at least that's what I
| remember.
|
| I used to spend a lot of hours creating those for my website...
| So great times, so many memories... I don't remember being happy
| back then, but I am sure I was, just that I didnt know.
| controlledchaos wrote:
| The internet really is for porn.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| If anyone is planning on using any of those GIFs on their
| websites i have a request: don't. They are extremely annoying and
| distracting when i'm trying to read and they give me a headache.
| I'm not sure why any websites use GIFs. But _very_ impressive
| collection nonetheless.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Wow, that is quite the variety of banners. Everything from
| (unironic) "Netscape Now" animations and RealPlayer banners to
| Discord and Mastodon promos.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I miss these days, thanks for sharing.
| mckeed wrote:
| I saw digital blasphemy on there. I checked and it still exists
| and he's still updating!
| pkulak wrote:
| That Covid-19 one sure was prescient.
| slver wrote:
| Reminded me of this:
|
| http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
|
| ...and how many of the ads on this page are for "pixel ads" (no
| longer functioning of course).
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Oh wow. I remember writing my first website and coveting those
| little banners. All the _real_ websites had them outline their
| community associations and capabilities.
|
| Oh, my website is just a bit of text in some awful arrangement of
| neon colours that work in every browser? Better have an animated
| badge for each browser so that the people know, because the
| people must know!
|
| Excellent find!
| deaddodo wrote:
| Yeah, and you don't get the real effect of them outside of
| 800x600 or 1024x768. They _look_ small here, but were
| relatively large on pages back then.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Weirdly the AdGuard Tracking Protection filter has a cosmetic
| rule that is blocking the images.
|
| If I'm understanding the syntax correctly it seems to be this
| one. ~underverse.su,~underver.se,~minu.stv.ee,~
| sota.com,~7kingdoms.ru,~epicl2.com,~forum.ixbt.com,~forum.themega
| .ru,~gamepedia.com,~makeserver.ru,~mozhor.ru,~onliner.by,~wiktion
| ary.org,~yandex.by,~yandex.com,~yandex.com.tr,~yandex.ru,~yandex.
| ua##img[width="88"][height="31"]
|
| The comment says the intent is to hide hit counters.
| rvz wrote:
| Another collection waiting to be sold as an NFT soon.
| junon wrote:
| This takes me back to the days of forum signatures,
| planetrenders.com, pixel fonts with 1px strokes, making emoticons
| ( _not_ emojis) on deviantArt, BBCode and making long-winded
| posts on VBulletin /PhpBB boards with the top three posts
| "reserved for later use".
|
| Man I wish I could go back.
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Yes! This is how I got my start in design. So many Photoshop
| tutorials that started with Render Clouds. Haha!
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| And then you had like ps 3 and the effect in the next step
| required version 4 or something
| MrLeap wrote:
| clouds -> difference clouds a few times -> invert -> ctrl+L
| and compress = lightning is still a recipe in my muscle
| memory.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I used to "hand-craft" HTML. Literally, writing it and no
| templates so each page is unique. Gallery page was manually
| updated.
|
| If I kinda deeply think about it - I post may be one post every
| 2 months. Why the hell do I need a blogging CMS or static site
| generator, etc? Just craft a HTML page. You can just write it
| by hand. #header_h1 ...is it that much more work to write
| <h1>header_h1</h1>? Especially, every once in 2 months!? Each
| blog post would be custom. And AWESOME and set in stone. "What
| if I need to update the header on every single page?" Just
| don't. No need to update the theme ever. It's like writing a
| hand written letter, once you put the ink down, it's done. Mail
| it.
| aparks517 wrote:
| I've been doing this for a while and it's great. If you know
| a few tricks (optional closing tags, for example), writing
| HTML by hand can actually be rather pleasant. Go for it!
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I used to copy html from the previous page and then modify
| as necessary.
|
| Overtime it evolved and got cooler! But, there was no need
| to go back and update old posts.
|
| I think charm about this is severely underrated as seen by
| the downvotes.
| unicornporn wrote:
| Some people still do this. http://john.ankarstrom.se/html/
| bluedino wrote:
| "Under Construction" images, rotating skull and fire GIFs...
| sp332 wrote:
| http://www.textfiles.com/underconstruction/
| ceautery wrote:
| Flaming logo... spinning logo...
| roland35 wrote:
| Can't forget albino black sheep and homestar runner!
| unicornporn wrote:
| Deviantart? Seems you're in the wrong millennium? Deviantart
| started in 2000 and at that time I fondly remember us making
| fun of 90s web design by creating mock sites with 88x31
| graphics. In -97 I remember it being all the rage though. :)
| Three, four or five years may not sound like a lot of time, but
| the web was changing at a pretty rapid pace back then.
| username91 wrote:
| 88x31s were still alive and well on early deviantART:
| https://www.deviantart.com/fractalmbrown/art/Baby-
| deviantART...
| klaussilveira wrote:
| > pixel fonts with 1px strokes
|
| Nostalgia kicked in hard.
| aba_cz wrote:
| You know what's interesting? You are not alone. Something Awful
| forums still have most of these things and people are even
| paying for that in the year 2021 :D
| grishka wrote:
| Userbars!
| _def wrote:
| I completely forgot about them! Just looked at a bunch of
| them, they (and forum signatures in general) were kind of
| awesome.
| simook wrote:
| I too miss those days.
|
| What's stopping us?
| sbarre wrote:
| We're all older and we need reading glasses now? ;-)
| pak wrote:
| You'd probably enjoy this collage of GeoCities vibes:
|
| https://www.cameronsworld.net/
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| Unlike Geocities, that site is a masterful work of design!
| (And the wayback machine links are broken today due to a
| planned power outage.)
| cmg wrote:
| Fair warning: Page 1 transfers about 8.3MB with 1,000+ HTTP
| requests. And will likely bring back memories of the 90s.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| This site would benefit greatly from HTTP 2.0, but it's kinda
| cool to see each banner load one after another.
| qwertox wrote:
| Some do fail to load for me, yet they then do load when I
| right click them to open them in a new tab.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The authentic 28.8k modem experience.
| derefr wrote:
| Or even more, data: URIs.
| coldacid wrote:
| Yeah, the speed at which it loaded definitely brought back that
| 90s feeling.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| So... on par with any modern website (minus the 90s)?
| cmg wrote:
| As theandrewbailey said, it would absolutely benefit from
| HTTP/2 - it took about 30 seconds to complete on my fast
| cable connection on a laptop.
| sverhagen wrote:
| I saw the slow loading of the page, and it made me confident
| that Hacker News will take it down soon enough.
| rasz wrote:
| Loads as fast as modern YouTube.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Imagine loading this page in the 90s though! One new HTTP
| connection at a time, a full TCP handshake. Maybe if you were
| lucky you were using Netscape which would load up to 4
| resources at once!
| chrisco255 wrote:
| 8MB would take all night on my 2400 baud modem.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| We were hacking back then too.
|
| pipelining:true
|
| (Not really a hack, but a lesser known optimization)
| fhw8234 wrote:
| Nice
| nixass wrote:
| Flashback to dial up era. Love it.
| godot wrote:
| Oh man, seeing "88x31" really takes me back. Internet Explorer
| and Netscape buttons were all the rage to put on your web site. I
| remember making some 88x31 buttons/logos myself too. I know it's
| nostalgia talking but it truly was the good old days of the web
| to me.
| allenu wrote:
| I was surprised to not find any X10 ads in there, but I guess
| they just never did small GIFs. Some of their examples from back
| in the day http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kuan/x10.html
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Interestingly all of those images seem to be for their camera
| products. But long before those, X10 sold remote control
| systems that switched devices on/off over in-home electrical
| wiring (using the independent X10 protocol). The reliability of
| these systems were pretty bad as I recall. They offered
| something like 16 channels with various management devices that
| allowed for complicated scheduling of device switching.
| allenu wrote:
| Heh, I remember those. I had my first internship around that
| time and one of the made-up jobs my boss at the time had me
| do was look into those switches. Another intern told me he
| just wanted someone to look into it since he wanted to try
| using them on his own home. :)
| anonymousiam wrote:
| X10 was the first real home automation standard. The protocol
| was subject to interference and poor propagation, and did not
| use any EDAC or acknowledgement so it was pretty unreliable.
| It was still pretty useful for some things, and X10 devices
| are still being sold.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The technology may have been fine. The advertising was
| insanely ubiquitous, in a way rarely seen since. Maybe
| Evony?
| twic wrote:
| Those ads were annoying enough that Kompressor wrote a song
| about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF8NK6eruUs
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(page generated 2021-06-15 23:00 UTC)