Yay! The CSS Sprite Generator is Open Source. Let’s play!

February 23, 2008 on 7:06 pm | In ajax, http |

Last September I posted about a CSS sprite generator designed to reduce the tedium of a popular HTTP optimization. The developers responsible, Edward Eliot and Stuart Colville, graciously released the generator under a BSD license earlier this month.

One of the first articles I wrote about CSS sprites covered the built-in support in GWT, and I focused on their clever trick of including an MD5 checksum of the sprite map contents into the filename. This allows you to set effectively infinite cache headers since the name will change if the underlying image is modified.

Since the CSS sprite generator is now open source, I decided to add the checksum approach as an optional feature (on by default). You can try it here, or grab the tar or patch.

3 Comments »

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  1. Hi,

    Pleased that the source is useful to you. I’m dropping a note here as I’m getting some confused users emailing me about the version you’ve put up (http://demo.ajaxperformance.com/spritegen.html) which they’re mistaking for our official version:

    I’d be really grateful if you could update this copy to remove our “Website Performance” graphics and add a note to say that it’s based on the original tool but isn’t the official version.

    It was an oversight that we didn’t distribute the source with vanilla styling and an additional link in the footer to clarify this. We will of course do this in future releases.

    Many thanks,

    Ed

    Comment by Ed Eliot — May 15, 2008 #

  2. Good point, Ed. I’ve made some updates for clarity. Sorry for the oversight.

    Comment by Ryan Breen — May 15, 2008 #

  3. Ryan - no worries. Thanks very much for taking the trouble to update (and so clearly). Very much appreciated.

    Comment by Ed Eliot — May 16, 2008 #

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