Posts Tagged ‘CSS Sprites’
The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials
CSS Sprites are not new. In fact, they are a rather well-established technique and have managed to become common practice in Web development. Of course, CSS sprites are not always necessary, but in some situation they can bring significant advantages and improvements – particularly if you want to reduce your server load. And if you haven’t heard of CSS sprites before, now is probably a good time to learn what they are, how they work and what tools can help you create and use the technique in your projects.
What Are CSS Sprites?
The term “sprite” (similar to “spirit,” “goblin,” or “elf”) has its origins in computer graphics, in which it described a graphic object blended with a 2-D or 3-D scene through graphics hardware. Because the complexity of video games has continually increased, there was a need for smart techniques that could deal with detailed graphic objects while keeping game-play flowing. One of the techniques developed saw sprites being plugged into a master grid (see the image below), then later pulled out as needed by code that mapped the position of each individual graphic and selectively painted it on the screen.
Sprites were displayed over a static or dynamic background image, and the positioning of the sprite was controlled simply by the hardware controllers. The term was coined because the sprites seemed to “haunt” the display and didn’t really exist in the graphic memory.
The Pokemon Sprite Sheet, consisting of over 1000 graphic objects. Found here. You can click on the image for the larger version (thanks, Ryan!).
