Preloading Your Graphics

If you are not satisfied with the way your pages that contain graphics are being displayed in the Browser, it likely is because of a slow connection or that you are downloading a lot of graphics and it just takes time for the page to be built completely.  This is especially true for a page with a Software Simulation where you might have various graphics to build the interface. You don't want them "coming in" at different times, you would rather have the page display in it's best form when the page is loaded.

Someone that has made a tremendous contribution to the ToolBook Community is Peter Jackson of Australia. His Website ToolBookDeveloper.com contains a vast amount of Freebies as well as some really good Commercial Products that you can purchase.  One of the Commercial Products is the Graphics Pre-Loader.  Peter states: "The Graphics Pre-Loader is a tool that you use after the ToolBook DHTML export to add graphics Pre-Loading functionality to your project.  The Graphics Pre-Loader adds a web-based interface to your program that enables your users to Pre-Load graphics with the touch of a button." 

If you have a lot of graphics and a lot of books, I feel $149 for this product is money well spent.  This is a tool that can be added to your Local Developer's Exchange Tools.  What you get is a tool labeled: Nirvana Pre-Load Graphics.

Using the Tool:

1. Publish your application as you normally would do. 

2. Access the Developer's Exchange Tools from the Tools menu of your book.

3. Launch the Pre-Load Graphics tool from this dialog box.

4. From the Window Text tab you can change the Window title and Please Wait message if you choose as well as other text in the dialog box that the user sees during the Pre-Loading process.

5. From the Automation tab, you can choose to either have Automatic Pre-Loading as shown below or you can Ask Pre-Load and provide text to the user.

6. From the Banners tab, you can customize the dialog box that the user sees during the Pre-Load process.

7. The Mouse Effects tab allows you to set up a cool Ripple Mouse effect and you can define the text to display.

8. From the Loading tab, you can determine the Total Files, the Total Size and an estimation of the time to download at the slower modem speeds.

9. Clicking the Test button shows a preview of what the Dialog Box is going to look like to the user.

10. Clicking the Build button to add the code to the Web Export package.

11. Clicking the Save Data button saves the current settings for the Pre-Load process.

This whole process takes less than a minute per book once you make your settings for the Popup dialog box!

Click here to see this in action.