David and Jon - thank you for the suggestions! @David - Doh! I'm kicking myself for not trying that out, but I'll admit I've only used :content to actually insert content, it never crossed my mind to try and 'shape' it and apply a background to it.
@Jon - I see the benefits of using the clip property to handle this (printing) although it's more of a hack _UNLESS_ printing the icons improves readability of the printed page. So, I think it comes down to getting with the team and deciding: do these items improve readability of the printed page, or are they purely ornamentation for the web site. Off the top of my head, I think the answer will be 1/2 and 1/2 which brings up the next test - can I combine the two methods with the same sprite and only get one hit to the server? Regarding why use sprites, check out the article by Dave Shea on alistapart.com - http://alistapart.com/article/sprites. It's an oldie, but a goodie. Thanks again for the tips! On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Michael Stevens <[email protected]>wrote: > Ahhh... so a boatload of images used like this is what a "sprite" is? Heard > the term, never knew the meaning outside of my attempts to program a game > on > my Commodore 64 quite a few years ago... > > Mike > > From: Jon Reece [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, July 05, 2013 2:41 PM > To: Michael Stevens > Cc: CSS-Discuss > Subject: Re: [css-d] Can I specify how much of a background image to show? > > On Fri, Jul 5, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Michael Stevens <[email protected]> > wrote: > Is using images like this fairly prevalent? > > Using sprites is a solution to certain problems and it has actually been > around for quite a while. It definitely has its proper use cases. For > instance, if you are using a lot icons throughout a design then it makes > sense* to keep them all in one file (easier to manage and deploy), and the > performance benefit you get (as you mentioned, fewer HTTP requests) can be > exponential. > > More info here: > > http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/27/the-mystery-of-css-sprites-tec > hniques-tools-and-tutorials/ > > * Why use sprites for icons when you can use web fonts? > http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/ > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > css-discuss [[email protected]] > http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d > List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ > List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html > Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ > -- Chris Rockwell ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [[email protected]] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
