Initially I tried some rough sketches to illustrate human facial expressions which I could later accommodated in the spider face.

Then I came up with these illustrations with the face…

Spider Evolution begins

Little change in the face

The colored version

I was not happy with this result and to confirm that I asked my kid about this, She mentioned this as a “Frog”. that was the highlight!!!

After that I took a snap of a spider that I saw the same day. then I studied the Anatomy of the spider completely and then I came up with the following character with some added taste…

Image Reference

Outline of New spider evolved from the FROG

Improved version with cut colors

The final Approved version

Finally my spider FROG evolved into a complete Spider . It was a real fun to work on that and from then I always had a process to make an illustration. Please share any of your similar experience …

CSS 3 offers a solution:
we can stop resizing the textarea by the following CSS rule,

textarea {resize:none;}

Yes, resizing can be done for other elements also…

Further reading:

http://www.css3.info/preview/resize/
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#resizing

For easy understanding lets go by a simple example. Image rollovers that are most common in a web page are once handled using JavaScript. Later the same was handled using simple CSS with Pseudo class :hover. Either when JavaScript is used or CSS Pseudo class is used, two images were required to obtain the rollover effect i.e., one image for normal state and one for the rollover state.

The CSS for the same would be:


a{display: block; width: 40px; height: 45px; background: #ffffff url(images/button.gif) no-repeat left top; }
a:hover{ display: block; width: 40px; height: 45px; background: #ffffff url(images/button_hover.gif) no-repeat left top; }


image-rollovers

When CSS sprite is used, the normal and hover state images are combined into one image: The CSS for the link will be re-written as below:


a{display: block; width: 40px; height: 45px; background: #ffffff url(images/button-combo.gif) no-repeat 0 55px; }
a:hover{display: block; width: 40px; height: 45px; background: #ffffff url(images/button-combo.gif) no-repeat 0 5px; }


Note: In both normal and hover states same image is being used (button-combo.gif), but with its background position changed (55px for normal state and 5px for hover state).

Advantages of Using CSS Sprites

The above example shows us that instead of two images, CSS Sprites method uses one image and there isn’t much difference in the CSS either. Then how is it advantageous? Is it worth using this technique? Before you think of using CSS Sprites or not, I will list the advantages it has over the earlier methods.

Reduced File Size

The images used in the above example has file size of 1.91kb each (button.gif-1.91kb and button_hover.gif-1.91kb = Total size 3.82kb), whereas the combined image (button-combo.gif) has only 2.91kb i.e., exactly 0.91KB less which amounts to 23% approx.

CSS Sprites containing more number of smaller images will have more savings on file size than the cumulative of individual images.

Reduced Number of Packets

For an average user on 128kb/s connection,
the size of each packet transferred would be 1500bytes – (minus) 40bytes (for TCP/IP headers) = 1460bytes (1.46kb). Image having 1900bytes, requires two packets one with 1460bytes and the other with 440bytes. It is found that both these packets will be transferred at the same speed irrespective of their sizes. Hence the packet having 440bytes will take same time to get transferred as that of the packet having 1460bytes.Hence it is important that not only the file size but also the number of packets required to transfer images affects the web page performance.

The images button.gif and button_hover.gif requires ( 1.91/1.46 = 1.31) 2 packets each i.e., 4 packets on the whole, whereas the combined image button-combo.gif (2.91/1.46 =1.99) requires only 2 packets. Thus through CSS Sprites method we could save nearly 50% of the packets. It is for this reason web pages with CSS Sprites downloads faster than the ones having individual images.

Smoother Rollovers

When separate images for normal and hover states are used, it is common to see menus and hyperlinks getting blank when hovered. This can be often seen when the web page is viewed under lower connection speeds or when the traffic is heavy. What happens is that when hovered the menu item / hyperlink requests for the hover state CSS containing the hover image set as background. If the hover background image is not downloaded that particular menu item / hyperlink remains blank until the image gets downloaded in the cache. This causes jerky rollovers and flickering menus.

In CSS Sprites, by the time the normal state of the menu / hyperlink becomes visible the hover image will also be available in cache since both normal and hover states are embedded into one image. Only the background position of the images gets changed when hovered and hence the menus / hyperlinks have smooth rollovers.

Reduced HTTP Requests

Earlier when web developers used image slicing they were mislead by the fact that by having more number of tiny sliced images the web pages can be made faster. But the worst part is that every tiny image used creates an HTTP request to the server. Hence more the number of images be it small or big, it requires equal number of HTTP requests causing overload to server. This leads to increased bandwidth costs. CSS Sprites embeds all images into one single image with necessary spacing, reducing the number of HTTP requests to one. Hence it is wiser to make one master image comprising all the individual images instead of using them separately.

There are many CSS Sprites generators freely available online. One such tool is http://spritegen.website-performance.org/. All we need to do is upload a set of individual images zipped together, set the horizontal and vertical spacing between individual images and naming conventions (optional). The tool will provide us the CSS Sprite of the zipped images and the corresponding CSS classes. It is simple and really worth using.

Performance analysis reports on some of the major websites showed that HTML took only 5%-38% of the total download time, while rest of the 62%-95% of the time is consumed in making Http requests and downloading various other components like images, style sheets, scripts etc.

This is exactly the same as the 80/20 rule coined by the famous economist of 1900’s Vilfredo Pareto. The rule states that 80% of the country’s wealth belonged to only 20% of its population. Similarly in software industry terms 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.

Reducing HTML download time could only rectify 20% of the issues related to web page performance, while the rest 80% is unattended. To attain major enhancements in web page performance, the unattended 80% comprising mainly of images, style sheets, scripts etc has to be targeted. Quantitatively images exceed in numbers when compared to style sheets and scripts which may be 4-5 in numbers at the maximum per webpage.

Reducing the number of images used per web page increases the web page performance considerably, but that doesn’t mean that the websites must be developed purely using background colors and borders with no images.

CSS Sprites makes it possible by increasing web page performance while retaining the same images as such.

What are Sprites?

The Sprites technique has its base derived from those that were used in the old video games. To reduce the memory load the video game developers used to place all the small images and graphics in one common grid.

For an instance if a particular image needs to be shown, then only the portion of grid containing that particular image will be revealed while the rest of the grid will be masked. Thus instead of loading all the images individually, they are stitched together into one common grid and is loaded as a group once.

The same concept is used in web development, wherein images in a web page / multiple web pages are combined together to form a single large image. This large image is used as background image in those areas where individual images will be shown.

By using CSS background positioning only the needed part of the large image will be revealed while masking the rest of the image.

You can see live examples and all advantages in “All about CSS Sprites for Faster Web – part 2”

source: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/03/19/internet-explorer-8-final-available-now.aspx

Acid3 test result: 20/100

http://cooltext.com/

Allows you to design text graphics like, logos and buttons by customizing the provided templates. You can select your font and color… and just wait to collect your images…