Data-URI's and caching

I read this on Wikipedia:

Data URIs are not separately cached from their containing documents (e.g. CSS or HTML files) so data i开发者_开发问答s downloaded every time the containing documents are redownloaded.

Does this mean that my code is downloaded every single time a page is refreshed or whenever the user clicks on a navigation link? What can I do to cache the data-uri's?

ps - i'm just talking about 20 or so small png files (mostly silk icons but 2 * 16KB files as well)

Data URIs are nothing more than text in the form of Base64-encoded binary data, that's embedded within your HTML and CSS files. So yes, they will be downloaded as part of your HTML and CSS files every time they're requested, unless those files are themselves cached.

If you keep your data URIs to just your stylesheets and send proper cache headers, caching your data: images together with your CSS shouldn't pose issues.