Hello!

Please use CSS Sprite for small buttons and smiles, increasing the performance of Fireboard ... is this possible?

Thanks!

This hasn't to do anything with FireBoard itself but with the individual template. You have to ask the template-developer to use these sprites.

But I'm not really sure whether that's a very convincing technique, because of the neccessary affort to change a single image. Not to mention if you want to change the size of an image.

I agree. Makes customizing VERY tedious at best.

really nice technique... do this works in all browsers?

Yes! It works on all browsers!

The next version of CB, they used CSS Sprite!

The editing of images in CSS Sprite is easier than you imagine.

Google, Yahoo, AOL use CSS Sprite, if they use it because it is good.

RealChat use CSS Sprite, see whether that is stable!

Please use CSS Sprite in Fireboard, all will enjoy!

More information.

www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/css-sprites/

www.alistapart.com/articles/sprites

I think it's a really nice and usefull technique for monolithic websites. But I wouldn't prefer it for templates, which are made (or at least where it should be possible) to be modified by other people.
Let's say I use the default_ex-template, which uses sprites, and I want to change the size of the "Reply"-icon. This would cause a change of all parts of the CSS-, HTML- and possibly PHP-code where any other icon of this "master image" is used.
Of course you only have this problem, if you put totally different images (quick reply, reply, quote, new thread, ...) into one "master image". If you only use one master image for the different states of the same image (for example hover-icons), this isn't problematic.
But because there aren't very much stateful images in the default-templates, it won't be very profitable.

rafaelgoncalves99 wrote:
Hello!

Please use CSS Sprite for small buttons and smiles, increasing the performance of Fireboard ... is this possible?

Thanks!

Have been looking into it. We need to come up with a way to take a template and optimize it either during install or with an extra component. That way we could not only Spriteize all small images, but also collapse all CSS and js files. There is a ton that can be done to tune for performance. No time right now, but something we should look at for 2.x

I have been thinking of writing a stand alone plugin for Joomla to optimize the main template as well as the fireboard template. I think people would like that...

So you can use a normal (without sprites and this stuff) template and this plugin modifies it (more or less) on-the-fly so it uses this technique?
This would be REALLY cool! This way you can use easy-to-modify templates together with all the benefits of sprites.
I'm sure very much people would be interested in this plugin!

What plugin? He said he was thinking about writing a plugin.

I can hear it now. "Any progress on this?"

I know... Otherwise I'd have only asked "Where?"