preloaded images being loaded on every page?

[esprague]

We're in the process of reducing the size of our images site wide. One big part of this is compressing the images in our navigation. A tool we've been using to help us do this is [websiteoptimization.com...] This tool shows us the total size of all of the images on a page.

However, in the details, it is showing images on pages that aren't anywhere on the page, even when doing a view source. After looking into it, these images are preloaded in our css file. It was my understanding that they would only be loaded on pages that are using their div class.

Am I mistaken, or is the tool wrong? Not sure if linking to my site is allowed just for testing purposes, if necessary.

If more information is required, please let me know. Appreciate any replies.

Thanks,
Carl

[rocknbil]

You know I've used that site a lot and never thought about it - but now that you mention it, I think that is incorrect. If you have the FireFox extension Live HTTP Headers, you can check it out.

Open Live HTTP Headers, make sure it's clear, and go to a page with a "common css". Go to a page that you know only uses a portion of the CSS images. Live HTTP headers should show only the CSS based images from that page being requested. I just did this on a site that has a huge amount of CSS images, and only see the ones on the current page being requested.

Of course, I could be wrong, nothing new. :-)

[esprague]

rocknbil,

I think you might be right. We'll try posting some of the css here for reference.

[alt131]

Hi esprague, and welcome to css.
I'd be keen to hear what you discover: Like rocknbil I use this particular tool all the time - have for years - but never took a closer look.

[esprague]

I'm pretty sure that this tool is inaccurate and is listing these when they shouldn't be. Other similar tools are not showing these preloaded images on standard pages, such as [webpagetest.org...]

Thanks for the help.