Happy #8bitday yesterday! It was the 256th day of the year. See last year’s post for why the 256th day is 8-Bit Day: https://tantek.com/2024/256/t1/happy-8bitday-binary-byte Since last year, the related Wikipedia article on “Programmer’s Day” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Day) was updated to finally acknowledge worldwide observation of the day. This year, inspired by the old 5k (bytes) competition (https://the5k.org/about.php), I suggested to a few friends that it may be possible to build an entire website where each resource fits into at most 8-bits worth of bytes. 255 bytes maximum size HTML, and maximum size of any linked external stylesheet, image, or even script file. Constraints are key to good, creative, and often innovative design. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/06/design-constraints-challenges-opportunities-practical-strategies/ I have some ideas for how to create meaningful HTML documents in ≤ 255 bytes. I also have some experience with creating interesting style sheets under similar constraints with the invention of TSS (Tweet Style Sheets or Text Style Sheets) at the 2010 Twitter Annotations Hackfest (#tanhf). TSS links and details on https://indieweb.org/TSS Intuitively I think a home page ≤255 bytes may be the most challenging, like displaying and linking to a stream of posts, in addition to basic about info. Post permalinks could display short notes (like old 140 character posts), requiring pagination to view anything longer. Images would be another interesting challenge, since even a 32x32 black & white (1-bit) icon would already be 128 bytes. What can fit into a 255 byte PNG or JPEG?, nevermind SVG, which will be much harder than HTML due to its much longer tags and attributes. The archived FAQ for the5k competition is a good start for answering various questions about how to build an "8-bit" website: https://web.archive.org/web/20050310075803/http://www.the5k.org:80/2001faq.asp I would add to that proper use of progressive enhancement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement), that is, all the content on a page is viewable, and all links, buttons, forms etc. work without loading any scripts. Besides the5k.org, have there been any similar challenges or competitions for 1k bytes, or 512 bytes? Why did Stewart pick 5k bytes instead of something smaller? Update: 8-bit examples — HTML, CSS, JS files all ≤255 bytes * https://tantek.com/8bit.html HTML+CSS * https://jamesg.blog/8bit HTML+CSS * https://tilde.club/~artlung/miniclock/ HTML+CSS+JS * https://villepreux.net/8bits/ HTML+CSS * ... who will be next? Responses: * 2025-258 https://jamesg.blog/2025/09/15/a-255-byte-web-page * 2025-259 https://indieweb.social/@villapirorum/115213910454844925 and blog post https://villepreux.net/blog/myweb/8bit-day/

Happy #8bitday yesterday! It was the 256th day of the year.

See last year’s post for why the 256th day is 8-Bit Day: https://tantek.com/2024/256/t1/happy-8bitday-binary-byte

Since last year, the related Wikipedia article on “Programmer’s Day” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Day) was updated to finally acknowledge worldwide observation of the day.

This year, inspired by the old 5k (bytes) competition (https://the5k.org/about.php), I suggested to a few friends that it may be possible to build an entire website where each resource fits into at most 8-bits worth of bytes. 255 bytes maximum size HTML, and maximum size of any linked external stylesheet, image, or even script file.

Constraints are key to good, creative, and often innovative design.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/06/design-constraints-challenges-opportunities-practical-strategies/

I have some ideas for how to create meaningful HTML documents in ≤ 255 bytes. I also have some experience with creating interesting style sheets under similar constraints with the invention of TSS (Tweet Style Sheets or Text Style Sheets) at the 2010 Twitter Annotations Hackfest (#tanhf). TSS links and details on https://indieweb.org/TSS

Intuitively I think a home page ≤255 bytes may be the most challenging, like displaying and linking to a stream of posts, in addition to basic about info. Post permalinks could display short notes (like old 140 character posts), requiring pagination to view anything longer. Images would be another interesting challenge, since even a 32x32 black & white (1-bit) icon would already be 128 bytes. What can fit into a 255 byte PNG or JPEG?, nevermind SVG, which will be much harder than HTML due to its much longer tags and attributes.

The archived FAQ for the5k competition is a good start for answering various questions about how to build an "8-bit" website: https://web.archive.org/web/20050310075803/http://www.the5k.org:80/2001faq.asp
I would add to that proper use of progressive enhancement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement), that is, all the content on a page is viewable, and all links, buttons, forms etc. work without loading any scripts.

Besides the5k.org, have there been any similar challenges or competitions for 1k bytes, or 512 bytes? Why did Stewart pick 5k bytes instead of something smaller?

Update:

8-bit examples — HTML, CSS, JS files all ≤255 bytes
* https://tantek.com/8bit.html HTML+CSS
* https://jamesg.blog/8bit HTML+CSS
* https://tilde.club/~artlung/miniclock/ HTML+CSS+JS
* https://villepreux.net/8bits/ HTML+CSS
* ... who will be next?

Responses:
* 2025-258 https://jamesg.blog/2025/09/15/a-255-byte-web-page
* 2025-259 https://indieweb.social/@villapirorum/115213910454844925 and blog post https://villepreux.net/blog/myweb/8bit-day/