Read from the bottom up. BRILLIANT SIMPLICITY!
Reblogging what I’ve already blogged because Jeff was kind enough to point everyone to our little secret as well :)
jeh:
The image above is used by Google to implement a common technique known as CSS spriting. This technique is used by most major websites to minimize HTTP requests and hence improve page load times. As an example, Facebook loads all of the News Feed icons in a single PNG file, displayed below. And yes, reblogging this post was an excuse for me to display Facebook’s icon set, which is totally awesome—Facebook’s design team is superb.
This is crazy genius.
“Google’s search pages load this 1 single image for their logo and all the UI parts and pieces, using CSS to crop the images as needed, which seems to me as 100% more efficient than managing a pool of tiny images.” - Dressed In Value: Google (via Chris Glass)
Smart!