Re: background-position-x & y

Jethro Larson wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical@gmail.com 
> <mailto:Simetrical@gmail.com>> wrote:
>  > Sprites are a terrible hack.  CSS shouldn't make any attempt to
>  > support them.  CSS sprites should be obviated, for preference, by
>  > browsers loading all images simultaneously, negating the performance
>  > advantage of sprites.  (Possibly only if the server requests this
>  > somehow, if causing server load is an issue.)  There is no possible
>  > justification for trying to support an interface where authors are
>  > supposed to manually concatenate images and manually specify offsets
>  > in CSS rather than treating the images as the logically separate units
>  > they actually are.  CSS sprites might be useful now, but that's a bad
>  > situation, not one that anyone should be trying to perpetuate.
> 
> Sprites are not a hack, they are an optimization that will always 
> improve download size, and almost always improve performance. That is 
> why sprites were used on games of the past and that's why they're used 
> now (e.g. texture mapping). Three 10px X 10px images will almost always 
> be larger than one 30px X 10px image add to that the cost of separate 
> http requests, and system memory, and there's a big difference. 

I don't think sprites are a hack, but using background-position for
them /is/ a hack. There isn't really an alternative yet, unfortunately.

~fantasai

Received on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 22:24:16 UTC