Building upon earlier efforts, the 88×31 GIF Collection amasses examples of an early and long-obsolete web advertising format.
A collection of 4540 classic 88×31 buttons from the 1990s, 2000s, and today in GIF format. I try to update this page regularly. Feel free to copy buttons to your website, but avoid hot-linking if possible.
Search reveals many similar projects. Paulus Hollander's one claims to have 6500 examples and includes a history lesson. The peculiar size is attributed to emulation of a Geocities button. Or perhaps a Netscape one… Or Yahoo! Business…
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 88×31 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.
The format now has nostalgia cred on the Indie Web. You can still make your own! For many years in the early days, Boing Boing had this one at its foot:
