Does Image sprite size matters

Question

Currently I am using a image sprite having size of 200K and its load time is 4.9 second.

My Question is,

1. Does the sprite image size matters while loading?
2. If the size is increasing, Can we break it in to two or three image sprite?
3. What would be the best option increasing the HTTP request or doing some compression?

Thanks

Answer 1

1. It matters if you want certain images to show up before others. Obviously no images can be shown until the whole thing loads. If there are elements of particular importance then break them into a separate file.

2. Yes

3. Compression won't get you very much because you are probably already using a compressed image format like jpeg or png.

If you need to optimize page load speed I would do my suggestion in point one and possibly use async requests for remaining images.