introduction
If you surf the modern "small web" to any extent you've encountered 88x31 buttons - a staple of late 90s and early 2000's websites1 undergoing a bit of a revival. The Neocities community especially seems to have truly embraced them. 88x31 buttons have a long history on the web, straddling the worlds of advertising and the personal web. Much like IRL jacket pins and buttons - they're small, colorful, collectible, easy to make and trade, and at a glance can confer just enough information to characterize the website displaying them.
Some examples of sites sharing some thematic elements spanning over 25 years:
Dann's Page
Bill's World
Paintkiller's links page
Solaria's Webspace
Ellie's Magical Website
ByteMoth's Perfectly Cooked Pages
They all feature 88x31 buttons in some capacity and those buttons reflect the website and it's designer in some way.
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