CSS Sprites – Why they are cool and A tool to make it easier

I’ve been experimenting with CSS sprites as of late, I’m half way through this project now so there seems little point in introducing them at this point. Basically speaking a CSS Sprite is a bunch of images amalgamated into a single image that you then use CSS and the :hover etc functions associated to links to move different parts of that image into view (Tabs would be an ideal example of this).

e.g.:

Anyway I found this very cool site that explains a lot more about it and it provides a cool tool to help you merge your own CSS sprites.

http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/