To do this, I must call the handler 15 times.
15 requests are not so many, especially if they are made from a clean page with low general requests.
CSS sprites are undoubtedly good practice, but they are usually created for many small, static images (great for buttons, icons, etc.).
One consideration is the overall size of the images. If the resulting sprite is very large, it can degrade the user's work, forcing them to wait for processing and loading the entire large image.
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