I find that centralizing images in css is useful for maintainability.
However, if page load time is an issue, it's a good idea to stress test the
site with both images in html and css. when they're in html, the height and
width tells the browser how big the image is which helps it load a little
I use conditional comments in the header to serve up IE-only stylesheets -
and the m$ "dynamic expressions" properties to emulate min-width and
max-width. For example, for a page that I've got wrapped in a containing div
named wrapper, I use this in my ie.css
#wrapper {
width:expression(
void