I wrote some Perl code that improved the look of those buttons (based on Trevor Blackwell's engine) at Viaweb back in 1997. I distinctly remember Paul, Trevor and others gathered around my screen to admire the new buttons. So nobody criticize the Yahoo Store buttons!
The images that are used by a Yahoo Store website are created once and for all and then stored as very small .gif files. For example, all the buttons in Paul Grapham's web-site are stored as the .gif file
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2117_16484650.gif.
You can download that file for yourself and examine it and learn that it has a size of 2896 bytes. So even on a 56K connection, it should take a fraction of a second to download all of the buttons Paul uses.
It's possible that my memory is faulty on the matter. I was probably around 14 or 15 at the time, but I remember looking for a nice heatsink/fan combo so I could try overclocking, a project which would later lead me to make a really awesome water-cooling contraption (it involved a sizable A/C radiator soaked in ice water, hooked up to a doubly stacked set of 60w and 80w peltier coolers -- I ultimately had problems with frost which ended up frying things).
At any rate, I (think) I remember waiting forever for each individual and unappealing icon to load at this store. It's completely possible that the store was a Yahoo Store knock-off, or that it was before the optimization you mention. I guess we'll never know, since I've probably cleared my cache since then.
