About background images and icon

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

, +

I've observed that often the websites use only one background image which contains multiple images on it. For example, instead of using separately icons, all of the icons are put on one image and then the different parts of image are used in different section. Is there any advantage of this? Also, How can this be used? For example, the following Yahoo's images, if i want to display the second icon in a div, how would I do it? and what is advantage of it?

Posted 23-Mar-13 23:56pm

rahul_kakadia

Add a Solution

Comments

Prasad Khandekar 24-Mar-13 6:38am

Hello Rahul,

This is typically done to reduce the roundtrips that a browser has to make in order to display the web page. When browser loads the HTML it also has to fetch the various images, css, script files referenced within it. By combining multiple images browser has to download only a single image. By the way this is possible because CSS specification also supports it via position attributes of background rule.

Regards,

2 solutions

Solution 1

For me, I got lazy or move advanced, and started using image strips, I'm setting the CSS anyways, so why not just move the image over to the left for icon 2. So now I have less artwork to track, it's faster, download the image once.

in the css, you specify the background-position,

background-image: url('/image.png');
background-position: 0px 16px;

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_background-position.asp[^]

Posted 24-Mar-13 10:51am

jkirkerx

v2

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

vinodkumarnie · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-29T18:50:00

Hi.. Really you asked best question.. Here is the reason why we should combine multiple images into one..

1. Each images used in webpage is considered as a one http request while loading.
2. Webpage load time depends on number of requests in a page.
3. As the number of requests is less obviously page load time is less.
4. Also if you use multiple images they consume more space, so better to combine them into one.

See below links to know about positioning background images..
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_background-position.asp[^]
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/playit.asp?filename=playcss_background-position[^]

Below link will clearly show solution to your question..
http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/[^]

Hope this helps you lot...