Totally fair; and I wasn't intending to pick on this example in particular. However, I see a lot of this "look at this amazing shit we pulled with CSS" that's generally inapplicable beyond their (admittedly cool) example.
The other week, I heard a developer talking about one of these "amazing shit we pulled with CSS" examples and excitedly tried his hand at a few inspirations of his own. (Sadly, they didn't go further than his own machine.)
Later, as he was working on a new feature, he realized he could achieve a particular effect without any images for a slight improvement in performance (fewer requests and all that). That achievement came because of the experimentation he did a week earlier.
I think there can be a lot of value in experimenting for the sake of experimenting. It's part of the fun of coding. Aside from the potential morale benefits, sometimes the experimentation leads to useful inspirations that make it to production.
