Question

1. is css-sprite good technique? I read about its pros at http://spriteme.org/ and have also I seen a lot of questions about css sprites here in stackoverflow.

2. What are its cons?

3. Will it work in all browsers as claimed in their site?

Answer 1

Yes, it is a good technique.

You can reduce the number of HTTP requests and it is a page optimization technique.

The first rule in

Best Practices for Speeding Websites by Yahoo

is

Minimize HTTP Requests

80% of the end-user response time is
spent on the front-end. Most of this
time is tied up in downloading all the
components in the page: images,
stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc.
Reducing the number of components in
turn reduces the number of HTTP
requests required to render the page.
This is the key to faster pages.

CSS Sprites are the preferred method
for reducing the number of image
requests. Combine your background
images into a single image and use the
CSS background-image and
background-position properties to
display the desired image segment.

One way to reduce the number of
components in the page is to simplify
the page’s design. But is there a way
to build pages with richer content
while also achieving fast response
times? Here are some techniques for
reducing the number of HTTP requests,
while still supporting rich page
designs.

When you need to change the dimensions of the images inside the sprite then you have to recalculate the offsets for the images. But I don’t think this is a huge burden.

It is supported by almost all modern browsers.

This is also a good article on CSS sprites

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them