I recently came across css-tricks.com. It’s a really nice site. I like his design choices, especially.
Browsing around, I stumbled upon one of his articles on css sprites. I’ve heard of sprites, but I didn’t really dig too much into them. My impression of sprites was–exactly as Chris says–that they’re just some little images.
But after reading through Chris’ article, I learned what CSS sprites really are. They’re not just little images. They’re bigger images. And the image itself is actually a collection of frames, which when put together, create a composite of those images, maybe animation, maybe just some :hover behaviors.
The thing that struck me most was that I’ve actually been using CSS sprites for quite some time all over the place! I’ve been using them primarily for navigation tabs, as is covered in my tutorial on the topic.
So I guess this means I’m gonna have to start digging around a lot more with CSS sprites. I’ve already been using them for so long! And I’ll bet that lots of the trickery I’ve used has already been laid out with sprites.
Some more on CSS sprites: