The add on is permanently running in our vBulletin board ( > 2.000.000 posts), take a look:
http://www.united-forum.de

The add on will be supported via this thread. If you have any questions, issues, improvements or feedback regarding this add on, please feel free to post a comment or write us a pm at any time. We are happy to discuss :)

Our tests are based on version 0.7.0. We used the analytic tools firebug network utility and the googlelabs.com page speed site

on the client side the following parameter were used:
download speed: 5.7 MBit/s
ping: 31ms

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2011/10/15.png

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2011/10/16.png

The intention behind css sprites is the bundling of many small graphics into one large graphic in order to decrease the number of required http requests. This shortens the loading times of the given website. In addition, the the accumulated size of all small graphics is higher than the size of the sprite due to reasons of compression.
You can find further information in a great article by Chris Coyier.

Aside from the technical implementation, the question on how much one actually does gain by using css sprites is of the most interest. Obviously they decrease loading times - but how important are small loading times and what is the impact on vBulletin overall loading times?

A short time ago, Jasper Aguila pointed out that speed is one crucial stickiness factor in his blog on vBulletin.com.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasper Aguila vBulletin Support The internet has unfortunately contributed to the exponential decrease in attention span for many individuals. That's why this decade is seeing a trend in emerging technologies emphasizing the importance of speed request. It's crucial for your content to be promptly distributed in a timely manner, else bounce rate will increase - making you lose returning visitors. It's also important to note that slow sites may be penalized by search engines. With better browsers, more powerful processors, and improved technologies constantly releasing each year, it's becoming quite difficult to provide excuses for slow loading pages. Therefore, try optimizing your server for speed. Read up and learn optimization techniques at vBulletin.com's Server Configuration forum.

In addition, the google ranking is influenced by the site speed as well.

Google Webmaster Central Blog

Quote:

Originally Posted by 09.04.2010 - Google Webmaster Central Blog You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

vBseo Webmaster Mert G?k?eimam

Quote:

CSS sprites is a huge bonus for big boards , any big board owner definately should use it.

Last but not least, not only the user's loading time is reduced, but also does the server load decrease as the server will have to handle a lot less of http requests. This clears available connections and cpu time.

In the current released beta version 0.7.2, sprites are available for FORUMHOME and FORUMDISPLAY. Coming up next SHOWTHREAD.

Sprites are created style based for all forum styles and saved in a folder which you can set via the imgdir_sprite stylevar. You have one additional button in the ACP (CSS-Sprites -> Refresh) which automatically creates all sprites, the according css definitions and includes those css definitions in the vBulletin css rollup files.

• upload the contents of the upload folder into your forum home directory.
• import the add on in the ACP
• upon installation a new stylevar imgdir_sprite will be created. Update this stylevar based on your file structure - default value is the vbulletin sprite directory. Make sure the folder is writable, else the sprites can't be saved!
• create the sprites via the ACP at CSS-Sprite using the Refresh option.
• If you have installed TMS, you are done now. This was an easy gained speed up, not? If you didnt installed TMS and didnt want to do it, proceed with the next point:
• in order to use the sprites, you then will have to edit some templates. The diffs (xou will find it in the do_not_upload folder show which parts you have to delete '<' and which parts to add '>' In addition, on top find the lines in which you will find the respective code.[/b]

Answer
I assume you use a GD Libary older than 2.0.36.

GD had a problem handling grayscale images with alpha channel correctly, which was fixed with GD 2.0.36 in the year 2007.

The solution is to update the GD-Libary to 2.0.36 (or later) or replace every file which uses "gray+alpha" with an version using "color RGBA".
I would advise to update the GD-Libary, cause there is also a serious security problem, that was fixed by Debian in the year 2009.

For the embed Version of GD within PHP, this issue is fixed since PHP 5.3.0.

Answer
Yes. This addon has one side support for CDNs. One side meaning we can't write the sprite on your external server (and never can). But it doesn't has any problems reading the icons out of your CDN and writing it to a local filepath where your CDN sync function can distribute it to your CDN.

Answer
The addon has the option to include custom icons. Be warned it's meant for advanced users (and style designers). An explanation can be found here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showp...&postcount=177

Answer
The feature to use forums custom icons is builtin in vBulletin 4. You can add to every forum an own imageprefix, so it will use forums custom icons. If you use the vBulletin imageprefix for your your forums, these icons will instantly added to the sprite.

An explanaition to this can be found in the vBulletin Manual (under Prefix for Forum Status Images):
https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/...orum_add_forum

Answer
Despite covering hundreds of icons our addon can't cover everything. Especially gradients can't be automatically replaced since they differ a lot in custom styles. But, we do offer a hook so you can add your own icons into the sprite, based on the needs your board has.
A longer answer why we can't include gradients and all custom icons can be found here
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showp...2&postcount=49

To add the missing Icons yourself, please read: How to add custom icons into the sprite?

Answer
Some custom styles do include their own background, for example behind the search icon.
Since sprites replace the icons with the sprite background this gets in the way.
Solution: Modify your search icon to include both background and icon and refresh the sprite.

• now supporting folders for forum prefixes
• sprite generation splittet to avoid timeouts on sites which a huge number of styles
• checks if the gd version is 2.0.36 or higher (experimental)

• added support for search.php pages including What's New
• some minor bugfixes

• full support for ltr/rtl
• forum sidebar support added
• FORUMDISPLAY support added

• Added the possibility to use TMS for automatic template modification.
• Icons can now be merged into different sprites and css rollups instead of one big sprite.
• Addon is now compatible with vBulletin 4.1.x

• Added support for http filepaths and therefore one-way support for CDNs
• Templates are now using the cache system
• clientscript/sprite_vbulletin_collapse.js removed.

• bug-fix: using alternative paths for post icons could cause that these are not includes in the sprite.

• possibility to add custom icons into the sprite via plugin-hook sprite_add_icon
• added log output during sprite generation in the acp
• option to deactivate using post icons in your sprite (default should be on)

• Added support php versions < 5.3.0. Addon now just requires php5 due to TypeHinting

• Add-On release
• FORUMHOME css-sprite support