SmartSprites is a tool that will let you easily introduce and maintain CSS sprites in your designs. SmartSprites parses special directives you can insert into your original CSS to mark individual images to be turned into sprites. It then builds sprite images from the collected images and automatically inserts the required CSS properties to your style sheet, so that the sprites are used instead of the individual images.

sprites for the lazy

CSS sprites are a way to reduce the number of HTTP requests made for image resources referenced by your site. Images are combined into one larger image at defined X and Y coorindates. Having assigned this generated image to relevant page elements the background-position CSS property can then used to shift the visible area to the required component image.

another way to save precious HTTP hits from your page