88x31 Collection

There are many theories as to why the format of 88x31 pixels is chosen. This means the picture is 88 pixels wide and 31 pixels high. The 88x31 size was chosen because it was small enough to fit on most web pages, yet large enough to be easily visible. The first theory is that 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. Many users wanted to customize their page so they started making their own 88x31 size buttons.

The second theory is that Netscape set this format. Because Netscape wanted their browser to be used the most they introduced many HTML-tags specific to them. The only way to view these websites was to use a Netscape browser, to inform the user this was the case the webmaster put a Netscape 88x31 button on their website.The third theory is that the default size for Yahoo Business (and their partner IAB) ads became the standard, this size of ad was know as a micro banner.

This website is entirely handcoded in Microsoft Notepad. Only HTML and basic CSS is used. It is a great hassle to manually make all the img-tags. I used Microsoft Excel and &-commands to make them. This website is tested succesfully in Windows 98 with Internet Explorer 5 however CSS was not working and the pictures loaded very slow. I published made two articles on the English Wikipedia and on the Dutch Wikipedia.

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