Comment by mattmanser
9 hours ago
Who remembers sprite sheets? Does that give my age away?
I did an optimization pass for a client once where I got rid of a ton of the sprites but didn't have the energy to redo it all, so it just had huge sections that were blank.
Super snappy loading afterwards though.
Yes, good times! With http2/3 they don't really matter anymore though, you get similar benefits from request pipelining.
Spriting is actually harmful for performance except in specific HTTP-1 scenarios.
Doesn't McMaster Carr still use sprites? Is that like the one optimization they managed to get wrong?
1 reply →
I indeed remember.
HTTP 2+ (supported by every web browser) obviates sprite sheets.
They were a useful hack, but still a hack.