We’re working with a slow embedded browser and trying to eek as much
performance out of it as we can. We recently combined all CSS and
JavaScript files using the excellent Jammit asset packaging tool, a Ruby
wrapper for the YUI compressor.
I’m wondering if someone has written a similar Ruby wrapper for
automatically combining multiple images into a single image in such a
way
that it fits into a rake workflow. If you’re unfamiliar with this
technique
it’s used by YouTube among others. Here’s an example of a single image
which contains all of the (non-thumbnail) image elements on YouTube:
From there CSS positioning is used to display the relevant portions of
this
image.
Does such a tool exist? Ideally we’d develop with uncombined images,
then
switch to combined images in production.
