Welcome Fitch, I was wondering when you were going to get your question posted.
preloading,
there are a lot of different ways to do this I am sure but here is what I use, people will inevitably have better solutions but I have used this for a couple of years now and it has served me well. I just do it straight up in the head, I don't call a function onload or anything like that.
var canUseImageArray = false;
if (document.images){
canUseImageArray = true;
}
if (canUseImageArray) {
menu1_on = new Image();
menu1_on.src = "/images/img1-on.gif";
menu1_off = new Image();
menu1_off.src = "/images/img1-off.gif";
menu2_on = new Image();
menu2_on.src = "/images/img2-on.gif";
menu2_off = new Image();
menu2_off.src = "/images/img2-off.gif";
}
then a function like this for the rolls
function rollmeover(pic,state) {
if (state == "on") {
document.images[pic].src = eval(pic + "_on.src");
} else if (state == "off") {
document.images[pic].src = eval(pic + "_off.src");
}
}
As for including common footers with javascript, I have never done that and I am not totally sure you can. I use php for that purpose.