Re: Image sprites use cases

On 9/3/2009 6:10 AM, Alex Kaminski wrote:
> However it still does not provide much help to the developers of web
>  applications and component libraries who also need an efficient
> method to address many (possibly hundreds) of image fragments.

Hmm... I went back and looked at some of the emails and it looks like a
lot of the code [1] you're trying to kill comes from trying to emulate
multiple operating systems and offering the same UI component at
alternate sizes. I'm wondering if there aren't better solutions than
using sprites to reduce code complexity.

I have to ask:
* How often do authors try to do such things (i.e., offer multiple OS 
themes and component sizes)? Is this primarily useful in libraries? 
(Libraries are expected to be complex, so if this is only useful in 
libraries, then perhaps this feature isn't really necessary especially 
if packages solve the HTTP problem.)
* Do you have any examples of live, public Web sites that currently do 
either of these two things?
* Could the desire for components in multiple sizes be solved with
(scalable) vector image formats or better image-resizing algorithms in
browsers?
* Could the desire for OS-specific appearances be solved with the CSS3
Basic UI module? Maybe this could solve the sizes problem as well if
they can be scaled?
* Since the style sheet is so repetitive, would it be easier and make
more sense to just programmatically create it via ECMAScript? (I'm aware
of accessibility concerns, but, in the example [1], a |div| element is
used as a form control, so I can only assume that scripting is a
requirement to use it at all; interestingly, if you were using a normal
form control, presumably, you'd get the native appearance out of the box
and a lot of your CSS could be eliminated). You seem to want something 
that a scripting language does better than CSS (specifically: loops).

[1]
http://www.w3.org/mid/6328fb9a0908301410t16bcb035u8792359b07cfa8ea@mail.gmail.com

Received on Friday, 4 September 2009 05:48:40 UTC