Wisdom from Gmail Developers
Quote:
...We made sure that all our images were cacheable by the browser, and we consolidated small icon images into single meta-images, a technique known as spriting...
This is from an article at eff.org I was just reading. (an excellent site for anyone who didn't know about it) Its basically about how to properly deploy their HTTPS Everywhere firefox add-on.
article is here
My curiosity is whether someone will explain to me in visual friendly terms how the steps taken by the gmail developers in this quoted portion would cut down on the HTTP request send. I understand the making images cacheable part well enough, its self-explanatory. the second part is where my curiosity lays, about spriting and consolidating the small icon images into meta-images.