Archived Snowflakes
32Bit-mas 2023 Snowflakes
About Snowflakes
While attempting to build a snowman army I was reminded of pixel snowflakes. As the name implies, they were little pixel snowflakes that were created with the intention of being "adopted" and shared on webpages online. I currently cannot find a central hub; if one existed it was most likely CCG's page. I find them a charming little nugget of the internet's history, so Here's a page dedicated to them and featuring as many as I could find.
As someone who was not there for the initial run of snowflake swapping, the best background information I could find was from IngesPixelPlace who shared that her friend CuteCountryGraphics started the idea, and had made the initial outline and "rack" to dangle the snowflakes from. Unfortunately CCG's website is mostly lost to time :-(
In 2023 it had a micro-revival of sorts, when the 32-Bit Cafe supplied the snowflake outline as a part of their holiday event. I haven't seen any in the wild, but I'll assume one or two have been made elsewhere in the last few years.
Making and Sharing Snowflakes
If you made a snowflake and would like share it here; Send a link to your website/page and a link to your snowflake image to either my guestbook or my neocities profile. Blank template below.
In order to align on a rack, a snowflake must be 49px wide X 55px tall; and the very center of the top and bottom must have a connecting point. Otherwise go ham. Below are two racks, the original made by CuteCountryGraphics, and the second by Didy. Some of the snowflakes above don't actually meet these requirements, and I'll accept new ones that don't as well.
Please note this page is still a WIP. I'm looking for more snowflakes, trying to find the best webarchive shots I can, etc. Regardless of when/where you adopt your snowflakes from or how you display them; always be sure to save the image to your own server, and do your best to find + link back to the original creator.
Aligning Snowflakes Under a Rack
In the past, it seems most people hard-coded each image into an absolute position in order to eliminate any space (because there is inherient space between "lines" vertically in html)
The easiest method current-day (that I can think of) to deal with this is to put them in a div styled with "font-size: 0", and don't allow it to get wider than 4 snowflakes. Be aware that the strands of the rack are drawn for zero spacing (so don't put spaces/linebreaks between images.) Also if you align your text to left or right, you can have fewer than 4 on the final row.
P.S.: I made that one :-)
