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PreloadImages

Description:

Boolean value indicating whether or not HierMenus should preload its standard and embedded image rollover graphics.

Value:

Boolean (true or false), Integer (1=true, 0=false), or JavaScript expression that returns a boolean value.

Applies To:

Globally.

Browser Compatibility:

PreloadImages is supported in all browsers.

Comments:

Several graphical files are used by HierMenus in order to display "more" graphical icons (usually small triangular images) in menu items (to denote the existence of a child menu for this menu item) or menu scrollbars (to denote the scrolling direction). Preloading these images, i.e., loading them individually into the browser's cache before the menus are actually created, can improve the initial display of those images in some browsers.

Additionally, any images that you have embedded into your menu items and wish to use as rollover graphics (see the HM_o_RolloverImages object in the setup instructions) will be preloaded when PreloadImages is true.

HierMenus version 6 does not perform its image preload until after the HTML page has completed loading (HM 5.3 performed the preload during the page load). You can override this behavior by calling HM_f_PreloadImages directly from within your configuration file, in which case the PreloadImages setting becomds moot. See the setup instructions for further details.

The standard images preloaded by HierMenus include those specified by ImageSrc, ImageSrcOver, ImageSrcLeft, ImageSrcLeftOver, ScrollImgSrcTop, and ScrollImgSrcBot.

If you are preloading your HierMenus images directly using a different method, you should set PreloadImages to false.

Examples:

// Ok:
PreloadImages:true,
PreloadImages:0,
PreloadImages:(window.thisPage=="cf")?1:0, 
    // if the user defined variable "thisPage" is "cf", 
    // PreloadImages is true

// Incorrect:
PreloadImages:"false",  // quotes not allowed around booleans
PreloadImages:"0",
PreloadImages:'(window.thisPage=="cf")?1:0', 
    // no quoted expressions

Default:

true

See Also:

ImageSrc, ImageSrcOver, ImageSrcLeft, ImageSrcLeftOver, ScrollImgSrcTop, ScrollImgSrcBot