CSS Sprites ?

Image Sprites

An image sprite is a collection of images put into a single image.

A web page with many images can take a long time to load and generates multiple server requests.

Using image sprites will reduce the number of server requests and save bandwidth.

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Image Sprites - Simple Example

Instead of using three separate images, we use this single image ("img_navsprites.gif"):

With CSS, we can show just the part of the image we need.

In the following example the CSS specifies which part of the "img_navsprites.gif" image to show:

Example

#home {
  width: 46px;
  height: 44px;
  background: url(img_navsprites.gif) 0 0;}

Try it Yourself »

Example explained:

• <img id="home" src="img_trans.gif"> - Only defines a small transparent image because the src attribute cannot be empty. The displayed image will be the background image we specify in CSS
• width: 46px; height: 44px; - Defines the portion of the image we want to use
• background: url(img_navsprites.gif) 0 0; - Defines the background image and its position (left 0px, top 0px)

This is the easiest way to use image sprites, now we want to expand it by using links and hover effects.

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Image Sprites - Create a Navigation List

We want to use the sprite image ("img_navsprites.gif") to create a navigation list.

We will use an HTML list, because it can be a link and also supports a background image:

Example

#navlist {
  position: relative;}

#navlist li {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  list-style: none;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;}

#navlist li, #navlist a {
  height: 44px;
  display: block;}

#home {
  left: 0px;
  width: 46px;
  background: url('img_navsprites.gif') 0 0;}

#prev {
  left: 63px;
  width: 43px;
  background: url('img_navsprites.gif') -47px 0;}

#next {
  left: 129px;
  width: 43px;
  background: url('img_navsprites.gif') -91px 0;}