[RFC] CSS Image Sprites

[joey77]

Forget about these CSS sprites already. This technic isn't flexible at all.
PHPBB could be optimized by server admins by using SPDY, which is already available in Chrome and will soon be in Firefox.
mod_spdy for Apache is already stable enough.

Look, PHPBB releases are rare. It takes years and years to evolve and CSS sprites is a technic for yesterday and today, not for tomorrow.
If we implement this, we might be happy for a short while and accept the downsides.
But soon the newest technics will be available in almost any browser/mutualized servers. The gains of CSS sprites will be negligible but the process to build CSS sprites will still be there and will be painful.

You can optimize your own PHPBB installation if you want to, but a community tool must be flexible and CSS Sprites aren't and this technic is on their way out anyway.

[brunoais]

SPDY is a project that is still in the starting phase. It'll take years (2014 minimum, I'd say...) to test and remove bugs. HTTP took long time to work correctly for the time it was made. SPDY will take about that time. This is a great project for that web, according to my reading. Let it evolve. It should be out by the time we release phpbb4. If this continues to evolve I believe it should be applied to phpbb4, not before.

[joey77]

We must be living in two different dimensions.
In mine, SPDY is already used by millions of users and will be used by at least a billion users by the end of the year.
Also, since i'm using phpBB since 2002, and according to my observations, I don't expect phpBB4 to be released until 2028 at best.

[brunoais]

We must be living in two different dimensions.

Welcome to my dimension.
According to my research, this feature is only available in the chrome nighties and only in some servers. It needs more testing and we need to know who good is that.
Which websites use SPDY at the moment? None or almost none, right? When there's a significant amount that uses something like this, then SPDY is a way to go. Until then let's just study the subject in the market and see how it evolves. It could even be a fail project that had a great idea.

[joey77]

According to my research, this feature is only available in the chrome nighties

OMG, what's your search engine ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/02/spdy-b ... irefox-11/
On the server side, Strangeloop implemented it last summer :
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/37772/

Which websites use SPDY at the moment? None or almost none, right?

Don't look at the present situation but see how it's evolving. Google is using it on its own servers, and Google is huge :
http://gizmodo.com/5517041/googles-insa ... visualized
Yeah OK, a lot of these servers are probably used for YouTube and SPDY isn't necessary for streaming the YouTube videos but anyway...

SPDY will soon be available for NGinx and Apache.

Silk is using SPDY, too. http://www.quora.com/Amazon-Silk/Why-di ... components

When Firefox will support SPDY and implementations will be available for NGinx and Apache, the SPDY adoption will rise very, very quickly.

[hanakin]

omg lock this topic and let it die a new RFC outline the actual approach needs to be made anyway...

the point is that weather spdy is out or weather u believe in using css sprites now and how much padding you feel they need is pointless at this current time within the scope of this thread. This thread was made in correlation with the modernization of prosilver thread which has since been abandoned for an extremely modular approach to accomplish this task.

I do not live in the reality of either of you it seems as I do not for see us waiting until phpbb 4 to accomplish all the necessary improvements to the theme. more and more of the smaller aspects are being moved into 3.1 as they get accomplished its based on weather or not the improvements are well layed out in an easy patch and does not alter too much for the current release.

The fact is if you had read through the discussion you would see this being accomplished possibly in 3.2 or even in a 3.3 prior to 4 being released.

In fact their have been several discussions about an entirely new look for 4 as it will be a long way off as its in its infancy.

[MattF]

In fact their have been several discussions about an entirely new look for 4 as it will be a long way off as its in its infancy.

Infancy you say? Why, I think it's still in its conception stage. I can still hear Barry White in the background, and there are scented candles beside the bed.

[Ishimaru Chiaki]

I do somewhat agree with Ishimaru Chiaki. Image sprites and any use of CSS should be used for style purposes, not content purposes. There are cases, for example the use of image sprites for the corners, navbar icons, etc. for which it makes a lot of sense to use CSS image sprites. I don't believe this is the case for the Quote, Edit buttons though.

If you or anyone can please provide some kind of proof to the fact that this is an issue first hand with the theme update then I will look into however I am unable to produce any issues on my end with using css images for the post buttons.

There is one css work around that comes to mind though that does not require images and that is to use @font-face with a custom symbol based font to produce monotone icons for the buttons

I come back with new stuff.

Have you ever tried to use the browser preferences in order to use your own color and make them override the sites' own style ? Because right now I have photophobia due to a possible new uveitis episode (I'll call to see an ophtalmologist ASAP), and as white backgrounds f… hurt my right eye, I decided to use my color preferences in order to use darkgrey backgrounds with lightgrey texts. Here's an example of the outcome on a phpBB forum :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25752921/img-access-fail01.png

I challenge you to try to use these colour preferences for a week, so you can see by yourself why using CSS backgrounds for content-bearing pics (buttons containing text within the pic, logos) is a mistake !

To do it on Firefox : Tools > Options (Windows version) or Edit > Preferonces (Linux version), then go to Content tab, then go to the "Colours…" button, change colours then untick the option that allows websites to choose their own colours. Then you get a result like mine.

[brunoais]

Have you ever tried to use the browser preferences in order to use your own color and make them override the sites' own style ? Because right now I have photophobia due to a possible new uveitis episode (I'll call to see an ophtalmologist ASAP), and as white backgrounds f… hurt my right eye, I decided to use my color preferences in order to use darkgrey backgrounds with lightgrey texts. Here's an example of the outcome on a phpBB forum :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25752921/img-access-fail01.png

I challenge you to try to use these colour preferences for a week, so you can see by yourself why using CSS backgrounds for content-bearing pics (buttons containing text within the pic, logos) is a mistake !

To do it on Firefox : Tools > Options (Windows version) or Edit > Preferonces (Linux version), then go to Content tab, then go to the "Colours…" button, change colours then untick the option that allows websites to choose their own colours. Then you get a result like mine.

It's not our problem that the user does not want us to show the page like we want. The user has the freedom not to use the styling like we wanted to deliver for him but by then we do not guarantee that the page will ever look & feel correct.

[hanakin]

unfortunately I can not review your photo as you uploaded it to drop box as apposed to posting it to the forums

I can asssure you even without seeing it that this has nothign to do with CSS sprites as sprites should be reserved for icon ic enhancements that are not nessecary without css the text alone should surfice. This is the way the web works and we can not change that.

I agree that css background images should be abandoned and as there is nothign we can not do now with css3 as far as background go