early

The GeoCities cat

 

 

In the heydays of the web hosting service GeoCities (1990s-2000s), this little critter, a simple tabby cat chasing an insect, was a staple GIF on many of its sites. Sadly the sleepy and active kitty never made the jump to Web 2.0, but is an important footnote in the history of the GIF as a decoration piece.

Credits: John Wong’s Cyber Castle of MatheLogical Ascertainment of Events 黃仲佳先生的「數學鑑證」及「事件偵察」資訊科技城 via GifCities and Internet Archive

#30YearsofGIFs – 5

 

 

Different versions of the ‘Under Construction’ GIF, such as the one featured above were popular on the early Net. For home-based website creators especially, these GIFs were a way of showing they were hard at work building their sites, just like at a construction site. Many of the GIFs were based off of US road signage. Sadly, after the demise of Web 1.0 in the first few years of the 21st century, the under construction GIFs that frequented the likes of Geocities went the way of the floppy disk, surviving now in only legacy sites and GIF collections.

Credits: Vijay Shah, Blingee