This is a good tweet from Harry:
I like it because, as he says, it’s the correct way to think about it. It helps form a mental model of how websites work.
Just to spell it out a bit more…
/*
Just because I'm in the CSS, doesn't mean I'll load!
In order for `myfont.woff2` to load, a selector needs to
set `font-family: 'MyWebFont';` AND something in the DOM
needs to match that selector for that file to be requested.
*/
@font-face {
font-family: 'MyWebFont';
src: url('myfont.woff2') format('woff2');
}
/*
Just because I'm in the CSS, doesn't mean I'll load!
In order for `whatever.jpg` to load, the selector
`.some-element` needs to be in the DOM.
*/
.some-element {
background-image: url(whatever.jpg);
}