Using CSS sprites is a great way to increase site response by lessening the number of HTTP requests needed to fetch a page.
Updating sprites can be tricky though. Browsers will cache an image containing sprites which makes adding new sprites tricky. The easiest way to get a browser to recache an image containing spites is to change the filename.
If using Drupal, to avoid having to do change the filename manually in each place a sprite is used, in a custom module you can set a Drupal variable or a PHP definition (using the define function) to designate the filename of the most latest CSS sprite.
Mon, 2009-11-23 11:50
The CSS is where the sprite action really happens. With those special class names that we have set up in the HTML, we can set which portions of the image to use. 220-602 First, we set relative positioning on the parent. Then we absolutely position each of the three regions within. We set all three of them to use the same background image (our sprite), set their respective widths and heights, and kick the text off the page. 642-642 Then, we set each of the months (12 possibilities), days (31 possibilities), 1Y0-A08 and years (goes 10 years out) with the specific background positioning needed to show the specific region we need.