Fair point, but I try to avoid second-guessing what's best for companies other than my own to do. For all I know, the bandwidth savings are greater than the cos

Fair point, but I try to avoid second-guessing what's best for companies other than my own to do. For all I know, the bandwidth savings are greater than the cost of the engineer who implemented it. That said, there may be a workaround for IE7 via MTHML. http://www.phpied.com/mhtml-when-you-need-data-uris-in-ie7-and-under/ http://www.phpied.com/mhtml-when-you-need-data-uris-in-ie7-a...