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Here's one approach. It would not show a progress bar -- but most browsers would indicate progress in some way in the status bar. The simplicity tradeoff might be worth losing the extra loading graph, which would require something beyond vanilla HTML as far as I know.
You can use the LOWSRC attribute in your image tag to show a fast loading gif with a text message. That image would then be visible while your larger file loads.
<img src="biganimation.gif" lowsrc="message.gif" width="www" height="hhh">
In Netscape 4 (which renders the lowsrc image just fine, by the way) the minute the first frame of the animation downloads, the browser renders that over top and the LOWSRC image is gone, so you're no better off.
I was surprised to see that none of my version 6 browsers (NN, IE, Opera) rendered the lowsrc image at all. This seems odd to me, because lowsrc is part of DOM1. But I haven't played with lowsrc in quite a while, so please forgive.
Right now I'm a bit stymied. You would need javascript, I think, which you said you want to avoid. Or you might use Java, but even more people would have problems with that than have problems with Javascript (two very different things). Neither case would be simple, in any event.
Flash might me a good answer for you, as long as you offer a non-flash alternative. Showing download progress is a standard feature in Flash.
Since this is my first post on this Forum, I'd like to say Hello! I'm based in Cork, Ireland and have been designing/developing for the Internet since 1994 when I was a year into my university studies. I look forward to contributing to this Forum.
Here's a preload images with progress bar [dynamicdrive.com] script from Dynamic Drive - is it what you were remembering?
In other words, make sure that you comment out the script and that any text (i.e. loading...) is created by the script and not by straight HTML. This way, non java scripters will just see a blank space.
That's the one!
1. This animation can be significantly optimized. At a guess, you could cut 80% or so from the file size and end up with a 60 or 70kb file!
A gif animation does not need to redraw all the pixels for each frame. In this animation, there are many pixels which could be static for the entire length of the animation -- the windshield itself and all the background. It just takes a graphics person who has a handle on how to keep all those extra pixels static frame after frame.
2. You might serve the same purpose (and perhaps serve it better) by having a slide show rather than an animation. The animation can change frames before the visitor has fully taken in what's on the screen. But a slide show puts the frame changes in the user's hands and allows both forward and backward motion as well. In addition, visitors can start using the slideshow while future frames are downloading in the background.
I have been looking at this DHTML code pretty closely, and I'm not convinced it will be at all easy to get it working cross browser and in all situations (resizes, etc.)
