Develop Reference

Once an image has failed loading, how can I make the browser retry?

I'm making a Chrome extension which in order to reduce bandwidth usage it stops all outcoming requests which are images.
I want to provide functionality where if the user clicks on the image (or technically a layer on top of that image) it would try to reload the image, this time not being blocked by the extension.
How can I tell the browser to retry loading the image? And if there isn't a straightforward way to do it, what would be a work around? Deleting the old image from the DOM and adding it again?
Any help is appreciated. :)
EDIT 1:
To answer #CBroe's question:
Using the chrome.webRequest.onBeforeRequest API in a background script.
To answer #jfriend00's question:
The usual placeholder "couldn't load image" icon, I guess also known as "broken file" icon:
See all those broken images?
That screenshot also illustrates the point of a layer on top of another image. Should those images not be broken, the loaded image would be there but that layer (the one in a dark grey which shows the image's dimensions) still remains there.
The desired href still exists there in the img tag:

If simply assigning the same src value to the img element is not enough¹, then create a new Image object in JavaScript, and assign the value to its src property.
¹ It might not be, if the browser just goes, “oh hey, that is the same value for the src attribute that the img already had, so I don’t have to do anything” – creating a new JS Image object however should make the browser request that resource again if he realizes he does not have it cached already.

What I would do instead is replace the URLs of the images with an image from your extension. A 1x1 pixel transparent GIF or PNG.
When you do this, add an attribute to all of the elements you replaced... something like data-yourextension-originalurl, with the URL of the original image. If the user then wants to load images, it's easy enough to go back and fix those image elements.

While I'm not too familiar with the Chrome API, a quick glance seems to suggest that there's no way to get the specific img element from each onBeforeRequest, which you'd need to know in order to figure out where to attach custom code.
This may be better accomplished with native JavaScript of some sort. For example, if Chrome lets you inject code on load, you could apply a function like the one below to all img elements after document load but before image load.
// Given an img element, replaces its src with a placeholder URL,
// and sets its click action to load its original src
function makePlaceholder(elem){
elem["data-oldtitle"] = elem.title;
elem["data-oldhref"] = elem.href;
elem["data-oldsrc"] = elem.src;
elem["data-oldonclick"] = elem.onClick;
elem.title = "Click to load the blocked image.";
elem.href = '';
elem.src = "http://example.com/placeholder.png";
elem.onClick = function(){
this.src = this["data-oldsrc"];
this.title = this["data-oldtitle"];
this.href = this["data-oldhref"];
this.onClick = this["data-oldonclick"];
};
}

The simple way to force reloading an image in JavaScript is:
var img = document.getElementById("myImage");
img.src = img.src.replace(/\?.+/,"") + "?" + new Date().getTime();
This adds a unique QueryString to the image which basically forces the browser to not use a cached version of the image.

Jquery Check if image done loading

I'm using the following to refresh the images which i'm using to prevents bots. So i want to show some GIF while the image is loading and hide it when loading is done.
$.CaptchaLoad = function(){
var src = '../php/captcha.php',
stamp = (new Date()).getTime(),
url = src + '?' + stamp;
document.getElementById('capcha').src = url;
};
Is in Ajax where i would use 'Success';

I'm not sure what $.CaptchaLoad plugin?
if above code works fine in your case.
Add onload listener to image object.
$("#capcha").on("load",function(){
//successfully loaded
//write a code here to hide your loader.
});

You could try .load event.
$("#capcha").load(function(){
//hide your GIF
});
But notice that there are some Caveats of the load event when used with images, quoted from the doc:
It doesn't work consistently nor reliably cross-browser
It doesn't fire correctly in WebKit if the image src is set to the same src as
before
It doesn't correctly bubble up the DOM tree
Can cease to
fire for images that already live in the browser's cache
One of them is : Can cease to fire for images that already live in the browser's cache. In your case, adding the timestamp does the trick. Remember not to remove it.

Placeholder while an image is loading with Ember.js [duplicate]

I'm currently working on a web application which has a page which displays a single chart (a .png image). On another part of this page there are a set of links which, when clicked, the entire page reloads and looks exactly the same as before except for the chart in the middle of the page.
What I want to do is when a link is clicked on a page just the chart on the page is changed. This will speed things up tremendously as the page is roughly 100kb large, and don't really want to reload the entire page just to display this.
I've been doing this via JavaScript, which works so far, using the following code
document.getElementById('chart').src = '/charts/10.png';
The problem is that when the user clicks on the link, it may take a couple of seconds before the chart changes. This makes the user think that their click hasn't done anything, or that the system is slow to respond.
What I want to happen is display a spinner / throbber / status indicator, in place of where the image is while it is loading, so when the user clicks the link they know at least the system has taken their input and is doing something about it.
I've tried a few suggestions, even using a psudo time out to show a spinner, and then flick back to the image.
A good suggestion I've had is to use the following
<img src="/charts/10.png" lowsrc="/spinner.gif"/>
Which would be ideal, except the spinner is significantly smaller than the chart which is being displayed.
Any other ideas?

I've used something like this to preload an image and then automatically call back to my javascript when the image is finished loading. You want to check complete before you setup the callback because the image may already be cached and it may not call your callback.
function PreloadImage(imgSrc, callback){
var objImagePreloader = new Image();
objImagePreloader.src = imgSrc;
if(objImagePreloader.complete){
callback();
objImagePreloader.onload=function(){};
}
else{
objImagePreloader.onload = function() {
callback();
// clear onLoad, IE behaves irratically with animated gifs otherwise
objImagePreloader.onload=function(){};
}
}
}

You could show a static image that gives the optical illusion of a spinny-wheel, like these.

Using the load() method of jQuery, it is easily possible to do something as soon as an image is loaded:
$('img.example').load(function() {
$('#spinner').fadeOut();
});
See: http://api.jquery.com/load-event/

Use the power of the setTimeout() function (More info) - this allows you set a timer to trigger a function call in the future, and calling it won't block execution of the current / other functions (async.).
Position a div containing the spinner above the chart image, with it's css display attribute set to none:
<div> <img src="spinner.gif" id="spinnerImg" style="display: none;" /></div>
The nbsp stop the div collapsing when the spinner is hidden. Without it, when you toggle display of the spinner, your layout will "twitch"
function chartOnClick() {
//How long to show the spinner for in ms (eg 3 seconds)
var spinnerShowTime = 3000
//Show the spinner
document.getElementById('spinnerImg').style.display = "";
//Change the chart src
document.getElementById('chart').src = '/charts/10.png';
//Set the timeout on the spinner
setTimeout("hideSpinner()", spinnerShowTime);
}
function hideSpinner() {
document.getElementById('spinnerImg').style.display = "none";
}

Use CSS to set the loading animation as a centered background-image for the image's container.
Then when loading the new large image, first set the src to a preloaded transparent 1 pixel gif.
e.g.
document.getElementById('mainimg').src = '/images/1pix.gif';
document.getElementById('mainimg').src = '/images/large_image.jpg';
While the large_image.jpg is loading, the background will show through the 1pix transparent gif.

Building on Ed's answer, I would prefer to see something like:
function PreLoadImage( srcURL, callback, errorCallback ) {
var thePic = new Image();
thePic.onload = function() {
callback();
thePic.onload = function(){};
}
thePic.onerror = function() {
errorCallback();
}
thePic.src = srcURL;
}
Your callback can display the image in its proper place and dispose/hide of a spinner, and the errorCallback prevents your page from "beachballing". All event driven, no timers or polling, plus you don't have to add the additional if statements to check if the image completed loading while you where setting up your events - since they're set up beforehand they'll trigger regardless of how quickly the images loads.

Some time ago I have written a jQuery plugin which handles displaying a spinner automatically http://denysonique.github.com/imgPreload/
Looking in to its source code should help you with detecting when to display the spinner and with displaying it in the centre of the loaded image.

I like #duddle's jquery method but find that load() isn't always called (such as when the image is retrieved from cache in IE). I use this version instead:
$('img.example').one('load', function() {
$('#spinner').remove();
}).each(function() {
if(this.complete) {
$(this).trigger('load');
}
});
This calls load at most one time and immediately if it's already completed loading.

put the spinner in a div the same size as the chart, you know the height and width so you can use relative positioning to center it correctly.

Aside from the lowsrc option, I've also used a background-image on the img's container.

Be aware that the callback function is also called if the image src doesn't exist (http 404 error). To avoid this you can check the width of the image, like:
if(this.width == 0) return false;

#iAn's solution looks good to me. The only thing I'd change is instead of using setTimeout, I'd try and hook into the images 'Load' event. This way, if the image takes longer than 3 seconds to download, you'll still get the spinner.
On the other hand, if it takes less time to download, you'll get the spinner for less than 3 seconds.

I would add some random digits to avoid the browser cache.

Javascript replace( ) function running more than once on the same image

I'm running a Javascript replace function to replace standard images with class="replace-2x"on my jQuery Mobile site with Retina-quality images if the user is on a mobile device with Retina display. For example, on a Retina device, logo.png will be replaced with logo#2x.png. The JS function is here:
function highdpi_init() {
$(".replace-2x").each(function () {
var src = $(this).attr("src");
$(this).attr("src", src.replace(".png", "#2x.png").replace(".jpg", "#2x.jpg"));
});
}
$(".page").live('pageinit',function(event){
highdpi_init();
});
I'm now running into an issue where the replace function is running more than once. So for example, it replaces logo.png with logo#2x.png as the page is loading, but then as the page continues to load, it KEEPS replacing .png with #2x.png in the img src over and over so that the image tag ends up looking like this:
<img src="mobile/images/logo#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x#2x.png" class="replace-2x" alt="logo" width="200">
How can I prevent this from replacing on a single img element more than once? Keep in mind, I will have multiple images on the same page, so the function will need to apply to all images, but only one time each.

The problem is surely that your 'pageinit' event is being called more than once. You can either follow MДΓΓ БДLL's idea (which won't work if images are dynamically added) or you can make your handler smarter so that it doesn't replace the src if it already was replaced
function highdpi_init() {
$(".replace-2x").each(function () {
var $this = $(this);
var src = $this.attr("src");
$this.attr("src", src.replace(".png", "#2x.png").replace(".jpg", "#2x.jpg"));
// Remove the class so it doesn't replace it again
$this.removeClass('replace-2x')
});
}
You don't need JS for this, you could do it in CSS only.
<link rel="stylesheet" media="only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2)" href="/css/highdpi.css"/>
You could make your images look like
<img src="transparent.gif" class="logo-a" alt="logo" width="200" />
And in highdpi.css you could do
img.logo-a {
background-image: url('file#2x.png')
}
And in lowdpi.css
img.logo-a {
background-image: url('file.png')
}

Using .one() should work since it is just a binding and if you are using Jquery Mobile the way that is suggested it will be just fine. That is unless you are passing back the html from the server. In which case it would be a good idea to add an extra condition to make sure that the src doesn't already have #2x.png before replacing.

There is disappointingly little documentation on pageinit on the offical jQuery Mobile docs. So I'm going to speculate here. It looks like pageinit is used to fire events for when a specific DOM element has finished loading, since it may not have been loaded on the initial page load (deferred until needed). That being said, it may be that adding/altering images to the DOM element in question fires the pageinit again. Could you tag each updated image with something that says, 'hey, I've already been updated to 2x'? Something such as
$.data(targetimg, 'retinafied', true);
And then check for that value before replacing the src?

Image width traces zero with onload when cached

I'm building a Javascript lightbox and I'm trying to adjust the size once the image has loaded. I'm using the code below, which works fine - it outputs the correct width once loaded.
My problem:
When I refresh, it will load the image instantly from the cache, and it seems to bypass the load. I get an instant zero for the width. Why does this happen?
My code:
var oImage = new Image();
oImage.src = 'http://mydomain.com/image.png';
container.html(oImage);
oImage.onload = function(){
alert(this.width);
}
** Update **
#Alex: This is the code I've tried with your plugin, I assume I'm probably doing something wrong. I'd be eager to get this working because your plugin looks quite good.
container.waitForImages(function() {
var cWidth = $(this).width();
alert("width: "+cWidth); // returns 0 - works first time but not cached
});
// Adding the image to the container for preload
container.html('<img src="mygraphic.png" />');

You need to do a few things...
Check the complete property of the img element.
Attach the load event before setting the src property.
Also, I found creating a new Image and assigning the src there is the best way to determine if the image has loaded or not.

You may want to switch the .html() and the .onload() calls.
If the image is loading from cache, I'm imagining that the .html() call completes before the script has had a chance to attach a function handler to the image's onload event. Therefore, effectively bypassing the load event itself (as the image has already loaded).
If it's still downloading the image (i.e. not cached), there will be more than enough time to call the .onload attach before the image completely finishes rendering.
While you're at it, you may want to do this the jQuery way, just so you're attaching events more similarly to DOM2 than DOM0.
var image = $('<img/>', {
src : 'http://mydomain.com/image.png'
}).load(function () {
alert(this.width);
})
// maybe clear container before if you want
.appendTo(container);
If we're going to have to set the src after the onload, we might as well do this instead:
var image = $('<img/>')
.load(function () {
alert(this.width);
})
.attr('src','http://mydomain.com/image.png')
.appendTo(container)
;
Hopefully that works cleanly.

This answer JavaScript: Know when an image is fully loaded suggests that you should set onload before setting src