Preloading 20MB+ of images. Is it worth it to attempt this? ?

Question

I'm developing a photography portfolio website. I want to know what would the best practice be for downloading images from a database. As of right now the entire gallery is roughly 20MB. The gallery is still in development, I intended on just having an "loading" graphic run between photos. But the client seems to prefer image preloading. Is it practical to have the page preload 20MB+ of photos, and if so, what is the best way to do so? Or would it be best to go with the loading screen?

Answer 1

Hello, Loading photos into an HTML/ Macromedia style program, if you have 20 megs of images, and you set it up so that each image loads on a page or X number of images per page (depending upon the size of those images) is going to determine how quickly your page/website loads. If it’s pulling images from an online database every time somebody opens it then of course it's going to take longer, but if you are Downloading images and embedding them into your website I would almost recommend that you reduce both the size and the DPI of the image. This way if the page is being viewed, it could take longer for it to load. This could be old thinking but from my experience with Macromedia images that were put into the program were reduced in size and DP I mainly so they could load quicker. just my personal opinion