CSS Image Sprites: The Easy Way To Use Images, WEB Development and SEO

We all want more traffic to our sites. Everyone wants more customers and clients on their list and is looking at ways to do it. A website designers in Mumbai will tell you that one of the best things to make your website as pleasing to the eye as possible, but we often overlook one of the simplest ways. 

Having an image on your site that pulls up slowly, has a considerable space between each line of text or doesn’t even visually match with the rest of your site is not only hard for a visitor to look at, but it will also affect search engine rankings and most likely turn visitors away in favour of another site.

CSS Image Sprites can be a pretty easy and quick alternative to overcome this problem, allowing you to integrate multiple images into one menu icon or banner image, saving both time and bandwidth, saving you money in hosting costs and making it easier for visitors to navigate your site improving overall user satisfaction with your brand and thus benefiting overall performance for Search Engine Optimization purposes.

 

What is CSS Image Sprits.

By using CSS image sprites, we can reduce the number of HTTP requests made for images referenced by our site. CSS sprites combine multiple images into a single larger image at defined X and Y coordinates.

We can then assign this generated image to relevant page elements, and use the background-position property to shift the visible area to the required component image.

Using image sprites reduces the number of server requests and saves bandwidth by replacing multiple small images with a single, larger image. However, as with other optimizations, saving a few bytes in file size should not outweigh readability and maintainability, so you should use them only when they make sense for your design.

 

Benefits of CSS Image Sprites

CSS Image Sprites are a great way to consolidate multiple images into one. They’re easy to use, and they’re relatively straightforward to build. You can even use an online tool like CSS Sprint Generator to create CSS sprites quickly and easily.

Using only one image can significantly improve your site’s SEO and performance because it reduces the number of HTTP requests browsers have to make when loading your page. The fewer requests that need to be made, the faster your site will load (and your SEO) better.

Website design company in Mumbai will tell you that if you’re looking for a simple way to reduce page load time and improve your site’s performance all in one swoop, check out CSS Image Sprites!

These images can be used in just about any website design project because they allow designers or developers to create custom layouts with minimal effort.

 

How do CSS Sprites work?

CSS Sprites are a subset of the standard CSS properties used in various situations. Image sprites are referred to as either “image-based sprites” or “images to be placed on the page.”

CSS Sprites can be used to create a variety of image effects such as pixellated text, animated text, moving images, etc. The sprites can also be applied to other CSS properties such as font family, background colour, font size and font style.

Using this technique is easy, and it doesn’t require an additional image library or image gallery. 

The only requirement is to include an HTML <img> tag with the desired CSS attributes and its src attribute. These attributes can be in any order but should not overlap with each other. As long as they do not overlap with each other, then it will work fine. It is also possible to use JavaScript or XML elements for some advanced features so that users can use them in their scripts.

The images used in this technique are primarily photographs or illustrations that are not too large not to hinder the user experience while browsing through them (i.e., they don’t drain the system). Images should usually only have borders (or margins) around them; otherwise, there will be problems like overlapping images, broken lines etc. 

As web design company in Mumbai will tell you that to avoid this problem, you may consider using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format for your images instead of PNG format like we do now (see picture below). The SVG format is a file format developed by W3C for web graphics (like web animations and SVG logos) that allows us to quickly create scalable vector graphics within HTML documents while maintaining full functionality through CSS specifications like line heights and positioning properties such as float, margin, transform etc. 

An image sprite is pretty simple to use. You simply need the following information: the URL of an image file you wish to display, optional style information (e.g., width and border radius), optional background colour information (optional), optional font information (optional) and an optional list of string IDs (optional). 

Here are some sample values for an image sprite: ./images/username.png , 100%_width_in_article_width , 3px_border_radius , 0px_background_color , white.

The URL you choose is entirely up to you; it may be a link or a regular HTML file. If desired, you may also include extra CSS code (such as animation styles). If you want separate images for different text boxes, choose one per element in your HTML document instead of using separate images for each box (as described below). It is also possible to display multiple images on the same page; however, be aware that there can be performance issues if too many images are displayed at once on your screen! 

You can read more about SVG here: SVG as an Image.

 

Creating CSS Image Sprites

A CSS image sprite is a combined image file containing all the graphics used on one webpage. Image sprites save time by not forcing the browser to load multiple images from separate files. Specific portions of the combined image can be shown using the background-position property in CSS. 

Here is an example of a CSS image sprite −

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html>

<head>

<title></title>

<style type=”text/css”>

.sprite {

   background: url(“Capture.png”) no-repeat;

   width: 280px;

   height: 200px;

   display: inline-block;

}

.flag1 {

   background-position: 0px 0px;

}

.flag2 {

   background-position: -255px 0px;

}

.flag3 {

   background-position: -510px 0px;

}

.flag4 {

   background-position: -765px 0px;

}

body {

   text-align: center;

}

</style>

</head>

<body>

<div><h1>Flag Image Sprite</h1></div>

<div class=”sprite flag1″></div>

<div class=”sprite flag2″></div>

<div class=”sprite flag3″></div>

<div class=”sprite flag4″></div>

</body>

</html>

 

Image Sprites – Navigation Lists

We would like to use the sprite image (“img_navsprites.gif”) to make a navigation list.

We will use an HTML list because it is a link and supports a background image.

#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;

}

 

Example explained:

• #navlist {position:relative;} – position is set to relative to allow absolute positioning inside it
• #navlist li {margin:0;padding:0;list-style:none;position:absolute;top:0;} – margin and padding are set to 0, list-style is removed, and all list items are absolute positioned
• #navlist li, #navlist a {height:44px;display:block;} – the height of all the images are 44px

 

Now start to position and style for each specific part:

• #home {left:0px;width:46px;} – Positioned all the way to the left, and the width of the image is 46px
• #home {background:url(img_navsprites.gif) 0 0;} – Defines the background image and its position (left 0px, top 0px)
• #prev {left:63px;width:43px;} – Positioned 63px to the right (#home width 46px + some extra space between items), and the width is 43px.
• #prev {background:url(‘img_navsprites.gif’) -47px 0;} – Defines the background image 47px to the right (#home width 46px + 1px line divider)
• #next {left:129px;width:43px;}- Positioned 129px to the right (start of #prev is 63px + #prev width 43px + extra space), and the width is 43px.
• #next {background:url(‘img_navsprites.gif’) -91px 0;} – Defines the background image 91px to the right (#home width 46px + 1px line divider + #prev width 43px + 1px line divider)

 

Web development and CSS image sprites

CSS image sprites are a way to improve the performance of web pages and make them look good.

Website design company in Mumbai will tell you that if you want your website to rank highly in search engines, you should use CSS image sprites. CSS image sprites help you to achieve this. You can do this by using CSS image sprites on your website. CSS image sprites are useful for displaying images on web pages, making websites look nice and using suitable font sizes.

CSS images of up to 128×128 pixels have been popular and well-used for years now to display images and information online. These days though, companies are using CSS sprite images for other purposes, so you must be aware of these pitfalls if you intend to use them in any capacity.

When used correctly, CSS image sprites can be a powerful tool for SEO purposes, but there are some things that you need to be aware of if you’re going to use them.

To create an Image Sprite, simply add an <img> element with an src attribute value set to the image file’s path you wish for inclusion in the page (which will probably be something like img/images/image_name).

If the images don’t exist yet, they will be created automatically when requested (in which case they will appear as such inside <img> tags). You can then set the src attribute value of each individual <img> tag using an alt attribute with any text content (e.g., “image_name” or “5×5”). 

This allows web designers and developers alike access to different uses for these aesthetically pleasing images without having to create separate assets for each purpose; all one needs is an HTML file containing all the needed code needed to display something in place of that specific thing – i.e., it’s similar in concept to how adobe Photoshop handles layers).

 

What makes CSS Image Sprites beneficial to SEO 

CSS Image Sprites are an alternative way to use images in web development. Often, images are used as the background for images. CSS Image Sprites allow you to use your images as backgrounds and turn them into a part of your website by using them as the background of your website.

There are different ways to use CSS Image Sprites on your websites. You could use them yourself or use a service provider like Wix or Dreamweaver.

Website designers in Mumbai will tell you that CSS Image Sprites offer better control over the placement of the image over its background, and they also save you time and bandwidth because it doesn’t have to be uploaded twice.

You can incorporate CSS Image Sprites in your graphics quickly and easily if you know how to use them properly.

 

Execution of CSS Sprint 

Assume an image is given to every item with the class toolbtn:

.toolbtn {

  background: url(myfile.png);

  display: inline-block;

  height: 20px;

  width: 20px;

}

 

The background-position property may be specified either as two x, y values following the url() in the background or as a single value. For example:

#btn1 {

  background-position: -20px 0px;

}

 

#btn2 {

  background-position: -40px 0px;

}

 

The following CSS rule would move the element with the ID ‘btn1’ 20 pixels to the left and the element with the ID ‘btn2’ 40 pixels to the left (assuming they have the class toolbtn assigned and are affected by the image rule above):

Similarly, you can create hover states with:

#btn:hover {

  background-position: <pixels shifted right>px <pixels shifted down>px;

}

Conclusion

To recap, in this article we explored why CSS image sprites are beneficial to web development and SEO. Image sprites are an excellent way to group images together and can be used to save bandwidth and improve website performance. If you have any further questions about CSS image sprites or would like some tips on implementing them, feel free to let us know in the comments section below and we will happily help you out. If you want to learn about how google search console can help improve your search results.