I get the concept of CSS Sprites (to make less calls to the servers for individual images) But does anyone do this as a service to people? I have read the online articles and used the SpriteMe plugin, but none seemed to help with my site. I have 94 images on my site that load on the main page. I am sure about 75% of these can be condensed to a single sprite to be called only once, but can any pictures be used for this. Or can it only be background pictures? http://dailyfailblog.com is my site, I went to Pingdom Tools to find out the amount of images my site loads (with a few images I don't even think my site uses...) If anyone can help just let me know! Thanks, Duane Haas
To be honest with you - I don't see enough static images for that site to see any real benefits from sliding backgrounds, because you don't have any images that should 'go together' as a single file that would only change when the template changes. What you DO have are a bunch of content images. Content images are always in flux, and as such are more hassle than it's worth to even try optimizing for in a single file. Sliding backgrounds / CSS sprites are for small images like Icons, border images on effects like sliding doors, or other stuff that's part of the site template - you don't have enough of any of those to be worrying about that. That said, you've got bigger problems than handshakes - while certainly the 117 separate files used to build the page causes handshake hell, that the total filesize is a whopping 1.4 megs COMPRESSED, and about 2 megabytes uncompressed means you've got WAY too much 'bulk' - especially when only half that is images... Seriously, 731k of javascript in 29 files??? FOR WHAT?!? Ah yes, jquery asshattery, like fifteen calls to different ad services (none of which show up here on the page, blessed be Opera) - your scripting ALONE is four to five times larger than the biggest page I'd consider deploying. Even the images - you've got nothing to make them the size ACTUALLY being displayed on the page, so you're wasting 100K a pop on images that many users aren't even clicking on and you're only showing at 200x100. Thumbnails are made for a reason. My advice, do yourself a HUGE favor and first axe the 'gee ain't it neat' bullshit scripting (like that silly rotating item thing), then neuter down the images on the page... Because right now, handshakes because of lots of files are the LEAST of your problems - that the site is twelve times larger than my upper limit I'll allow a page to be, and fifteen to twenty times my comfort zone is where your problem lies. 2 megabytes - mein gott.