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The 88x31 GIF Collection

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Re: The 88x31 GIF Collection

#21

Post by sverhagen »

bluedino wrote: post #12
bbrks wrote: post #8

For those who may be wondering why 88x31px? https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-odd-size-of-88x31-become-a...

>> 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

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

Re: The 88x31 GIF Collection

#24

Post by Nadya »

pcan77 wrote: post #4

I miss this version of the internet :( Everything is so boring now.

It's harder to find but it still exists. The hardest part is finding the retroscape 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.

Re: The 88x31 GIF Collection

#25

Post by sverhagen »

cmg wrote: post #3

Fair warning: Page 1 transfers about 8.3MB with 1,000+ HTTP requests. And will likely bring back memories of the 90s.

I saw the slow loading of the page, and it made me confident that Hacker News will take it down soon enough.

Re: The 88x31 GIF Collection

#26

Post by sedatk »

sverhagen wrote: post #21
bluedino wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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

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

It probably became a standard after it got popular.

Re: The 88x31 GIF Collection

#28

Post by bluedino »

zamadatix wrote: post #16
bluedino wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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

"why one place picked something" doesn't require special reasoning like "why everyone picked something" does.

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)
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