DesignWell

The need

Professional web developers have been aware of CSS sprites since 2004. They are the background graphics that change position based on mouse hover thus eliminating the need for JavaScript image swaps and image caching since the “mouse on” and “mouse off” are one image. I have been using sprites for years. It is a more tedious process than clicking Swap image on a DreamWeaver drop down menu, but it produces more accessible and more clean code. The most tedious part of creating CSS sprites for menu navigation is aligning the static (in-active) and hover (active) images. This script solves this problem by taking two images and merging them into one. I hope this increases your productivity and creates a more standards-compliant web. (more…)

It’s a little hard to find the download page for the archived players that were previously released by Macromedia. The address has changed due to Adobe buying them, too. Every release is available in a 15MB download.

Here is the current address for Archived Macromedia Flash Players.

–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com