Use <i> instead of <img>

[kordianbruck]

Following the font-awesome and others, you might as well advertise the <i> tag on the website instead of including a <img> with a blank gif. Saves one additional request to the server and the css works just as fine with that.

[LeoColomb]

Thanks for your comment @kordianbruck, in fact it's not my website.
My repo is an improved source of the methodology, and http://flag-sprites.com is the direct inspiration.
Nevertheless, you can obviously prefer use the <i> tag in your code.