It’s amazing what you can find in the Web when you’re idly surfing! Can’t even remember how I came across this little gem, but it is a little slice of Internet history it would seem (although I don’t remember hearing about it at the time). Built by Alan Outten in 2002 Guimp claimed to be the “World’s Smallest Website”… not the case any more (see later) but it’s still a damn impressive achievement. Fitting in only 18×18 pixels (the thumbnail to this post is actual size) it’s amazing what you can actually achieve. Of course, it’s difficult to remember that just because it’s so small doesn’t mean that there can be a lot of html behind it, but from a design perspective the space has been optimised to the max. Below are some screenshots showing one of the menus, a screenshot from the picture gallery and a mini “Game of Life” (the games are particularly impressive and also include Pac Man and Asteroids, all perfectly playable). All at actual size of course.
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The site can be found at http://www.guimp.com.
Soon after came the “REAL world’s smallest website” at http://dot16.pixeltemple.com, although smaller at 16 pixels by 16 the limitations of size are starting to come through and some inventive scrolling is needed. It is indeed a smaller website however, and includes animations and pictures again:
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Clearly having too much time on their hands, someone decided to push this idea to the limit and take it to another level entirely. Sander Voerman set up the “One Pixel Website” in the same year (judging from the domain registration) featuring “real content, animation and… link to another website”. For sake of completeness here’s a screenshot:
You can just about see it in the middle! The one pixel flashes, spelling out a poem in Morse Code and clicking on it will link to a web page telling you about the site, which is inspired by the above Guimp site.
