Spacer GIF

Prior to the adoption of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the spacer GIF was a transparent image, often used to control blank space within a web page, that can be resized according to the width and height dimensions it is given. The reason a spacer GIF is invisible is so that an HTML developer can create a table cell and fill the background with a specific color that can be viewed through the transparent spacer GIF. For instance, a developer seeking to create a square blue box 500 pixels on a side could use a separate blue 500 x 500 graphic at the expense of additional bandwidth. Instead, the developer can specify the table cell background color and specify the dimensions of a pre-existing spacer GIF.

History

David Siegel's 1996 book Creating Killer Web Sites [1] was allegedly the first to publish the Spacer GIF technique. According to Siegel, he invented the trick in his living room.

The use of spacer GIFs has declined due to the prevalence of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for laying out web pages, which achieves the same effect by changing the margin or padding on a given element. If used properly, CSS reduces unnecessary code in a web page. Blank 1x1 GIFs are still occasionally used to fix a PNG rendering limitation in Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 5.5 - 6.

Spacer GIFs have begun to be used with the recent advent of "CSS Sprites". Using a CSS Sprite will place several images on a grid, to display an image placed on a grid, the transparent spacer GIF will be stretched to the size of the grid image, and the grid image will be placed behind the spacer GIF.

External links

• Single-Pixel GIF Trick @ CKWS, by David Siegel
• Spacer GIF example: dot_clear.gif
• CSS2 Box Model Specification, World Wide Web Consortium
• Download pixel.gif/spacer.gif