Use of images in templates

Question

One of the things that has always bothered me about Apex templates is that they use IMG tags (extensively!) instead of pure CSS. This makes it harder to switch look-n-feel by switching stylesheets.
Take the example of the Reports Region template in Theme 10 (the theme I use the most)
The template has
< img src="#IMAGE_PREFIX#themes/theme_10/region_left_top.gif" alt=""/>This should (IMHO) be
< span class="t10ReportsRegion_left_top top_dims">& nbsp;< /span>and the stylesheet should have
span.t10ReportsRegion_left_top {
background-image:url(#IMAGE_PREFIX#themes/theme_10/region_left_top.gif);
span.top_dims {
display:block;
width:7px;
height:21px;
}This makes the page HTML markup semantically "pure" and the look-n-feel is controlled 100% by CSS (as it should be).
I changed the Reports Region template to do this at http://htmldb.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=24317:21 and it works fine.
Yes, it is a lot of work and there is really no real advantage to be gained unless all the templates in all the themes are made IMG-free but I think the benefit is worth it as we start to build more dynamic look-n-feel applications with changeable "skins" as we talk about recently on other threads.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hello,
Ah but IE even IE 7 does not correctly cache background-images so what you end up with is a page in IE that has to load the images every time which increase page weight, slows page loading and puts a bad flicker on the screen. You can even see this in some of the themes and the builder on slower connections in IE.
It's just another one of those things someone needs to write Mr. Gates about
Carl