Glue is a simple command line tool to generate CSS sprites
so I am actually wondering why you would even still use a spriting based approach.  It seems as if a data-uri based approach would, for all uses I can think of, be more flexible and better, especially if you are using something like compass ( http://compass-style.org/reference/compass/helpers/inline-da... ). for more info:http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/07/06/data-uris-make-css-...this stack overflow answer brings up 2 possible drawbacks of a data-uri based approach:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/3525961/897583
but it seems like if you are worried about your other css rules being blocked by your data-uri background-images, either put them in a css file that loads after your important rules, or just put them at the bottom of the css file.  and it seems like with gzip the increase in size is negligible.