7 ms·

GBC Boot Animation 88×31 Web Button

201 points by zakhary 9mo ago

mysterydip 9mo ago
I love the comeback of web buttons. And pages like this that go into great detail of such a niche thing.
- zakhary 8mo ago
  Thanks for the kind words! :)
catskull 9mo ago
Very nicely done! Great blog as well, I’ve subbed to your RSS.
- zakhary 8mo ago
  Thank you! I don't post as often as I'd like to, but I'm hoping to blog more this year
K2h 9mo ago
Excellent writeup. Thank yiu for showing the details step by step.
- zakhary 8mo ago
  Thanks! I'm glad people appreciated seeing my process for this silly little project
roskelld 9mo ago
I've missed Web buttons. I remember entire movements done using them back in the mid 90's. There were some boycotts where people would put the buttons on their site to show support. I also remember the ones proudly showing that their web page was written in Notepad or even Edit instead of some bloat ridden Frontpage or other generator site. This was a really fun read. Will sub to your rss!
- kristopolous 9mo ago
  https://9ol.es/buttons/index.html https://9ol.es/buttons/index.html a while back I did some archival scraping for these (using things like last modified dates, looking for meta generator tags... I forget how I wrote it exactly, it's probably somewhere) I did some research in icon packs but as far as I can find, a bunch of these are just independent creations. Therefore, I believe this collection is the definitive source of all of them. I found no other modern effort at collecting them.
  - mickeyp 8mo ago
    Those are just.. buttons. But they are not 'web buttons' like you'd see everywhere on the web in the 90s. They are the same shape and size as the link above, and they were indeed often animated GIFs.
    - gus_massa 8mo ago
      Here are a few https://anlucas.neocities.org/88x31Buttons https://anlucas.neocities.org/88x31Buttons (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793273 )
    - kristopolous 8mo ago
      They're earlier. There's basically 3 design eras. The first used 1 bit transparent gifs (i used those on my bootstra386.com site) The second had 40x40 buttons, then the third had 88x31... Ironically the best place to find this evidence is in books. Head on over to archive.org, find some mass market "how to use the web" books and they're full of screenshots. You could also do wayback machine but during the "folk art" era of the web, there was long forgotten web properties run by "just some person" with names like "web fairy's daily roundup" with these long links like homesite.unc.edu/~rhonda/links.htm or whatever. The fetishism for dot coms is probably post-1997 When you go through these old texts it's a sea of sites you have never heard of. Some of those are in the wayback, a lot of them aren't. You can clearly see the eras. There's also some promotional videos such as https://youtu.be/-1l6aBgX5UY?si=UioQTDenqHelQc07 https://youtu.be/-1l6aBgX5UY?si=UioQTDenqHelQc07 88x31 is where most of the effort has been placed on the archives and so I kind of just pass over that one The last thing is the hypercard cross-over ... there were many users and creators that went from that platform to the web and they took their hypercard design language with them. The 88x31 might be called the first post-hypercard era.
austinallegro 9mo ago
Great work! Also, Nintendo lawsuit incoming in 3...2...
- zakhary 8mo ago
  Thanks! > Also, Nintendo lawsuit incoming in 3...2... Lol I sure hope not
m00dy 9mo ago
I really like the colorful animation on the button. I was actually close to using the same technique for the DeepWalker intro, just open it on desktop in a browser that supports 3D. [0]: https://deepwalker.xyz https://deepwalker.xyz
- orphea 8mo ago
  I feel like you're self-promoting a little bit too much.
jwrallie 8mo ago
As a side effect of owning a GBC since I was 12, I can hear this gif! Over 20 years later, the atomic purple now looks a bit yellowish, and I had to replace the polarizer at some point due to UV damage, otherwise still working perfectly fine.
looperhacks 8mo ago
Cool post! The capture process sounds much more complicated than necessary. There are emulators that can capture the output as APNG/GIF/... If you really want to make sure that you have every frame, a good emulator also supports manual frame stepping without having to use the debugger.
- pimlottc 8mo ago
  You could also use a screen recorder with a non-lossy codec and grab the frames from that
- zakhary 8mo ago
  Thank you! Yeah I definitely could have improved the capture method. It happens to be that I'm already familiar enough with GBZ80 assembly, but given how tedious taking the actual screenshots was I would opt for a less complicated solution in the future.
0x00cl 8mo ago
There is a big collection here: https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/ https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/
synalice 8mo ago
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201 points by zakhary 9mo ago

mysterydip 9mo ago

I love the comeback of web buttons. And pages like this that go into great detail of such a niche thing.

zakhary 8mo ago
Thanks for the kind words! :)

catskull 9mo ago

Very nicely done! Great blog as well, I’ve subbed to your RSS.

zakhary 8mo ago
Thank you! I don't post as often as I'd like to, but I'm hoping to blog more this year

K2h 9mo ago

Excellent writeup. Thank yiu for showing the details step by step.

zakhary 8mo ago
Thanks! I'm glad people appreciated seeing my process for this silly little project

roskelld 9mo ago

I've missed Web buttons. I remember entire movements done using them back in the mid 90's. There were some boycotts where people would put the buttons on their site to show support. I also remember the ones proudly showing that their web page was written in Notepad or even Edit instead of some bloat ridden Frontpage or other generator site. This was a really fun read. Will sub to your rss!

kristopolous 9mo ago
https://9ol.es/buttons/index.html https://9ol.es/buttons/index.html a while back I did some archival scraping for these (using things like last modified dates, looking for meta generator tags... I forget how I wrote it exactly, it's probably somewhere) I did some research in icon packs but as far as I can find, a bunch of these are just independent creations. Therefore, I believe this collection is the definitive source of all of them. I found no other modern effort at collecting them.
- mickeyp 8mo ago
  Those are just.. buttons. But they are not 'web buttons' like you'd see everywhere on the web in the 90s. They are the same shape and size as the link above, and they were indeed often animated GIFs.
  - gus_massa 8mo ago
    Here are a few https://anlucas.neocities.org/88x31Buttons https://anlucas.neocities.org/88x31Buttons (HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33793273 )
  - kristopolous 8mo ago
    They're earlier. There's basically 3 design eras. The first used 1 bit transparent gifs (i used those on my bootstra386.com site) The second had 40x40 buttons, then the third had 88x31... Ironically the best place to find this evidence is in books. Head on over to archive.org, find some mass market "how to use the web" books and they're full of screenshots. You could also do wayback machine but during the "folk art" era of the web, there was long forgotten web properties run by "just some person" with names like "web fairy's daily roundup" with these long links like homesite.unc.edu/~rhonda/links.htm or whatever. The fetishism for dot coms is probably post-1997 When you go through these old texts it's a sea of sites you have never heard of. Some of those are in the wayback, a lot of them aren't. You can clearly see the eras. There's also some promotional videos such as https://youtu.be/-1l6aBgX5UY?si=UioQTDenqHelQc07 https://youtu.be/-1l6aBgX5UY?si=UioQTDenqHelQc07 88x31 is where most of the effort has been placed on the archives and so I kind of just pass over that one The last thing is the hypercard cross-over ... there were many users and creators that went from that platform to the web and they took their hypercard design language with them. The 88x31 might be called the first post-hypercard era.

austinallegro 9mo ago

Great work! Also, Nintendo lawsuit incoming in 3...2...

zakhary 8mo ago
Thanks! > Also, Nintendo lawsuit incoming in 3...2... Lol I sure hope not

m00dy 9mo ago

I really like the colorful animation on the button. I was actually close to using the same technique for the DeepWalker intro, just open it on desktop in a browser that supports 3D. [0]: https://deepwalker.xyz https://deepwalker.xyz

orphea 8mo ago
I feel like you're self-promoting a little bit too much.

jwrallie 8mo ago

As a side effect of owning a GBC since I was 12, I can hear this gif! Over 20 years later, the atomic purple now looks a bit yellowish, and I had to replace the polarizer at some point due to UV damage, otherwise still working perfectly fine.

looperhacks 8mo ago

Cool post! The capture process sounds much more complicated than necessary. There are emulators that can capture the output as APNG/GIF/... If you really want to make sure that you have every frame, a good emulator also supports manual frame stepping without having to use the debugger.

pimlottc 8mo ago
You could also use a screen recorder with a non-lossy codec and grab the frames from that
zakhary 8mo ago
Thank you! Yeah I definitely could have improved the capture method. It happens to be that I'm already familiar enough with GBZ80 assembly, but given how tedious taking the actual screenshots was I would opt for a less complicated solution in the future.

0x00cl 8mo ago

There is a big collection here: https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/ https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/

synalice 8mo ago

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