[thelist] Safari cacheing all CSS bg images

Dunstan Orchard dunstan at 1976design.com
Fri Jan 9 13:16:50 CST 2004


Drew Shiel <ashiel at sportsinteraction.com>:
>> http://www.1976design.com/blog/
>
> I can't help with the caching issues, I'm afraid, but I'm fascinated
>  by the weather images - it's a great idea to have the explanation in
>  the colophon. I do want to ask though - what advantage is there in
> having in the background images listed in a style sheet rather than
> some kind of dynamic include file? Or perhaps a better question would
> be: Why did you do it that way?

Well Drew, the images themseleves are pretty large (as you'll notice if 
you hit the site on a dial-up as I do) and I thought that it someone is 
visiting the site using a non-CSS enabled browser (or if they have CSS 
turned off) then they're probably in a situation where bandwidth is at a 
premium.

I've tested the site using browsers in handheld devices and it works 
fine - but if I'd thrown a huge image at the mobile phone then I'd have 
had problems: either it would take an age to download, or it would be 
reduced in size so much there wouldn't be any point in it.

By putting the image as a background to a div I can get around those 
problems, and it also means that the image loads in the background while 
the rest of the site renders quickly.

It's also a presentational image - it's only there to look nice, and so 
for that reason alone I'd probably insert it using CSS.

HTH,

- Dunstan (who's on digest)

---------------------------------------
Dorset, England
play: http://www.1976design.com/blog/
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