Chapter 8. Background Images and Other Decorative Properties

Adding decorative elements to make our websites more visually appealing is surprisingly resource- and time-intensive. Even simple graphical effects can require a lot of unnecessary markup. You are limited to only one background image per element, so to achieve a desired effect, which often involves duplicating images at different sizes, you commonly have to use as many as three extraneous elements. This leads to obfuscated markup, longer loading times, and more strain on the server to load those extra graphical elements.