[mattmanser]

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.

[ricardobeat]

Yes, good times! With http2/3 they don't really matter anymore though, you get similar benefits from request pipelining.

[chrisweekly]

Spriting is actually harmful for performance except in specific HTTP-1 scenarios.

[staticautomatic]

Doesn't McMaster Carr still use sprites? Is that like the one optimization they managed to get wrong?

[flomo]

Looks like it, but isn't this site famous for being a "classic" storefront?

Some CMSs would auto-generate sprites. If you are showing most of them, it's still a positive, I'd assume. And, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[paulddraper]

I indeed remember.

HTTP 2+ (supported by every web browser) obviates sprite sheets.

They were a useful hack, but still a hack.