Where should I place my resource files?

[eluser]EEssam[/eluser]
Hello,

1. I'm wondering where is the best place to store images, css and JS files? Outside the system folder, inside it or inside the 'views' folder?

2. I tried to place it in all of the above locations and I got CI 404 Page Not Found error message when trying to access any image. I have a .htaccess to remove index.php as follow:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ./index.php/$1 [L]

How can this be fixed?

Your help is greatly appreciated.