Is embedding background image data into CSS as Base64 good or bad practice?

This answer is out of date and shouldn't be used.

1) Average latency is much faster on mobile in 2017. https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/02/usa/state-of-the-mobile-network

2) HTTP2 multiplexes https://http2.github.io/faq/#why-is-http2-multiplexed

"Data URIs" should definitely be considered for mobile sites. HTTP access over cellular networks comes with higher latency per request/response. So there are some use cases where jamming your images as data into CSS or HTML templates could be beneficial on mobile web apps. You should measure usage on a case-by-case basis -- I'm not advocating that data URIs should be used everywhere in a mobile web app.

Note that mobile browsers have limitations on total size of files that can be cached. Limits for iOS 3.2 were pretty low (25K per file), but are getting larger (100K) for newer versions of Mobile Safari. So be sure to keep an eye on your total file size when including data URIs.

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/06/28/mobile-browser-cache-limits/

It's not a good idea when you want your images and style information to be cached separately. Also if you encode a large image or a significant number of images in to your css file it will take the browser longer to download the file leaving your site without any of the style information until the download completes. For small images that you don't intend on changing often if ever it is a fine solution.

as far as generating the base64 encoding:

• http://b64.io/
• http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp (upload)
• http://www.greywyvern.com/code/php/binary2base64 (from link with little tutorials underneath)