title: CSS sprites instead of images?
body: <p>Looking at the code for some big websites (as I sometimes do) I noticed that a few of the big websites (YouTube and Yahoo were the two I looked at) seem to use CSS sprites for pretty much everything, and hardly use any  tags at all.</p>
  
  <p>Is this generally regarded as good practice? I would have thought using the  tag would be better to use due to the alt attribute, although if the sprited image is used to link to something you can use a blank image to create the link and then give that an alt attribute (the youtube logo in the top left hand corner uses this technique) and have both the speed of using sprites and the accessibility of using an  tag.</p>
  
  <p>Although what about using sprites for images that aren't used for links? Can you simply use the same technique youtube uses except without the  tag, and get the best of both?</p>
  
  <p>And does anyone use sprites extensively when developing websites? I know you get performance bonuses by using them (less HTTP requests and all) but does it become horrible to admin a site where a lot of your images are in one massive image?</p>