Comment by viraptor
5 days ago
That's not what preload is for. You don't wait for the extra images on the first page. You start loading them after the page is complete, so that the next page loads faster.
5 days ago
That's not what preload is for. You don't wait for the extra images on the first page. You start loading them after the page is complete, so that the next page loads faster.
I'm not sure there was a technical way to preload back then.
I wasn't working in web dev in the early 00s, but I had done some informally. I just don't think preloading was a thing.
It's been a long time, but I'm pretty sure AJAX does not predate this website, SPAs were impossible, etc. I suppose you might do something with IFRAMEs, but you likely wouldn't be able to fetch those /after/ the main page. Preloading would be simul-loading and lag the hell out of your main window.
The way to instruct a browser to load back then was to wait for the user to actually click to fetch, and that would navigate away from the current page.
Dial up was 4 (four) kbps. Conceptually preloading wasn't possible I don't think
Very early, sure. But the later common speeds that most people experienced were between 14 and 56kbps.
Preloading was definitely possible even with just image tag ordering.