Using image sprites is sort of a last resort after you have done as much as you can with other optimization techniques. A sprite is an image that has all of your other images inside of it, so if your sprite has 10 images, you'd be getting rid of 9 HTTP requests and speeding your site's loading time up by the time for each of those 9 requests' latency.
S. Berghaus, и A. Back. Proceedings of the 10th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS 2016), Paphos, Cyprus, стр. 22:1--22:17. Atlanta, GA, Association for Information Systems, AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), (сентября 2016)
S. Scholze, и J. Barata. Technological Innovation for Cyber-Physical Systems: 7th IFIP WG 5.5/SOCOLNET Advanced Doctoral Conference on Computing, Electrical and Industrial Systems, DoCEIS 2016, Costa de Caparica, Portugal, April 11--13, 2016, Proceedings, том 470 из IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Springer, Cham, (2016)
H. Jodlbauer, и M. Schagerl. Informatik 2016: 46. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik, том P-259 из GI Edition: Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) -- Proceedings, стр. 1473--1487. Bonn, Gesellschaft für Informatik, (2016)