--- title: Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs | daily.dev description: A developer rescued 7,234 GIF icons from the 1990s Ibiblio Icon Browser, which used server-side imagemaps that made automated archiving nearly impossible. By... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/today-i-rescued-7-234-old-gifs-axlsaseib twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs | daily.dev og:description: A developer rescued 7,234 GIF icons from the 1990s Ibiblio Icon Browser, which used server-side imagemaps that made automated archiving nearly impossible. By... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/today-i-rescued-7-234-old-gifs-axlsaseib og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/aXLsaSEib.png og:image:alt: Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer rescued 7,234 GIF icons from the 1990s Ibiblio Icon Browser, which used server-side imagemaps that made automated archiving nearly impossible. By reverse-engineering the grid layout (72×89px cells) and systematically hitting the imagemap CGI endpoint with calculated coordinate pairs, they extracted redirect URLs for every icon. The icons were then downloaded with wget and republished as a searchable static site built with Ruby and ERB templates, making the collection browsable and archivable for posterity. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The MP3.com Rescue Barge Barge](https://daily.dev/posts/the-mp3-com-rescue-barge-barge-agq05ksws) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [I Stored a Website in a Favicon](https://daily.dev/posts/i-stored-a-website-in-a-favicon-s5g9qncj7) · Lobsters · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Amiga Pointer Archive](https://daily.dev/posts/amiga-pointer-archive-azn00auta) · Two Stop Bits · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ruby](https://daily.dev/tags/ruby) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/today-i-rescued-7-234-old-gifs-axlsaseib) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Today I Rescued 7,234 Old GIFs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/today-i-rescued-7-234-old-gifs-axlsaseib","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/today-i-rescued-7-234-old-gifs-axlsaseib"},"datePublished":"2026-07-12T18:57:11.408Z","dateModified":"2026-07-12T18:57:32.790Z","description":"A developer rescued 7,234 GIF icons from the 1990s Ibiblio Icon Browser, which used server-side imagemaps that made automated archiving nearly impossible. 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