Browser-independent way to detect when image has been loaded

In IE, you can onreadystatechange. There's onload, but I read https://stackoverflow.com/questions/198892/img-onload-doesnt-work-well-in-ie7">scary things. jQuery wraps up the DOM's load event quite nicely with "ready". It seems likely I am just ignorant of another nice library's implementation of image loading.

The context is that I am generating images dynamically (via server callbacks) that can take some time download. In my IE-only code I set the src of the img element, then when the onreadystatechange event fires with the "complete" status, I add it to the DOM so the user sees it.

I'd be happy with a "native" JavaScript solution, or a pointer to a library that does the work. There's so many libraries out there and I'm sure this is a case of me just not knowing about the right one. That said, we're already jQuery users, so I'm not eager to add a very large library just to get this functionality.

NOTE: I wrote this in 2010, the browsers in the wild were IE 8/9 beta, Firefox 3.x, and Chrome 4.x. Please use this for research purposes only, I doubt you could copy/paste this into a modern browser and have it work without issue.

WARNING: It is 2017 now I still get points on this now and then, please only use this for research purposes. I currently have no idea how to detect image loading status, but there are probably much more graceful ways of doing it than this... at least I seriously hope there are. I highly recommend NOT using my code in a production environment without more research.

WARNING Part Two Electric Boogaloo: It is 2019 now, most jQuery functionality is built into vanilla JS now. If you're still using it, it may be time to stop and consider heading over to MDN and reading up on some of the new and fun stuff vanilla JS has to offer.

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I'm a bit late to this party, maybe this answer will help someone else...

If you're using jQuery don't bother with the stock event handlers (onclick/onmouseover/etc), actually just stop using them altogether. Use the event methods they provided in their API.

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This will alert, before the image is appended to the body, because load event is triggered when the image is loaded into memory. It is doing exactly what you tell it to: create an image with the src of test.jpg, when test.jpg loads do an alert, then append it to the body.

var img = $('<img src="test.jpg" />');
img.load(function() {
    alert('Image Loaded');
});
$('body').append(img);

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This will alert, after the image is inserted into the body, again, doing what you told it to: create an image, set an event (no src set, so it hasn't loaded), append the image to the body (still no src), now set the src... now the image is loaded so the event is triggered.

var img = $('<img />');
img.load(function() {
    alert('Image Loaded');
});
$('body').append(img);
$img.attr('src','test.jpg');

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You can of course also add an error handler and merge a bunch of events using bind().

var img = $('<img />');
img.bind({
    load: function() {
        alert('Image loaded.');
    },
    error: function() {
        alert('Error thrown, image didn\'t load, probably a 404.');
    }
});
$('body').append(img);
img.attr('src','test.jpg');

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Per the request by @ChrisKempen ...

Here is a non-event driven way of determining if the images are broken after the DOM is loaded. This code is a derivative of code from an article by StereoChrome which uses naturalWidth, naturalHeight, and complete attributes to determine if the image exists.

$('img').each(function() {
    if (this.naturalWidth === 0 || this.naturalHeight === 0 || this.complete === false) {
        alert('broken image');
    }
});

According to the W3C spec, only the BODY and FRAMESET elements provide an "onload" event to attach to. Some browsers support it regardless, but just be aware that it is not required to implement the W3C spec.

Something that might be pertinent to this discussion, though not necessarily the answer you are in need of, is this discussion:

> Image.onload event does not fire on Internet Explorer when image is in cache

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Something else that may be related to your needs, though it may not, is this info on supporting a synthesized "onload" event for any dynamically-loaded DOM element:

How can I determine if a dynamically-created DOM element has been added to the DOM?

The only reliable way I've found is to do it all on the client-side like this...

var img = new Image();
img.onload = function() {
  alert('Done!');
}
img.src = '/images/myImage.jpg';

I think onload should work fine. Do you have to generate the markup for the images, or can you add them statically? If the latter, I'd suggest the following:

<img src="foo.png" class="classNeededToHideImage" onload="makeVisible(this)">

Alternatively, you can use window.onload to make all images visible at once - window.onload fires after all external ressources have finished loading.

If you want to add the images dynamically, you first have to wait for the DOM to be ready to be modified, ie use jQuery or implement your own DOMContentLoaded hack for browsers which don't support it natively.

Then, you create your image objects, assign onload listeners to make them visible and/or add them to the document.

Even better (but slightly more complicated) would be to create and start loading the images immediately when the script executes. On DOMContentLoaded, you'll have to check each image for complete to decide whether to add them immediately to the document or wait for the image's onload listener to fire.

Okay, I'll try to summarize the various partial answers here (including mine).

It would appear the answer is to use onload, which is "widely supported" though not officially required according to standards. Note that for IE in particular, you must set onLoad before setting the src attribute or it may not fire onload when loading an image from the cache. This seems like best practice in any case: set up your event handlers before you start firing events. Where onload is not supported, one should assume that the functionality simply isn't available.

If im not mistaken in javascript an image tag has the events onload and onerror

here is an intersting bit of code i did to hide broken images

in a style tag

img.failed{
   display:none;
}

using the img onerror i had a piece of javascript that did this.className=failed and it would hide the image if it errored

however i may have misunderstood what your goal

It would appear the answer is use onreadystatechange in IE, and onLoad in other browsers. If neither one is available, do something else. onLoad would be preferable, but IE doesn't fire it when loading an image from the cache, as noted in one of the answers below.

HTML

<img id="myimage" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3106/2819995451_23db3f25fe_t.jpg"/>​

SCRIPT

setTimeout(function(){
    $('#myimage').attr('src','http://cdn.redmondpie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/canarylogo.png').load(function(){
        alert('Main Image Loaded');
        
        $('#myimage').attr('src','image.jpg').bind({
            load: function(){
                alert('Image loaded.');
            },
            error: function(){
                alert('Image not loaded.');
            }
        });
    });
},1000);

JS Fiddle

http://jsfiddle.net/gerst20051/sLge3/

Using a data URI is the way to go. However, using an SVG instead of a GIF provides more flexibility. You can quickly change the size. Just run this in a JavaScript console:

var width = 1;
var height = 1;
'data:image/svg+xml;base64,' +
btoa(`<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="${width}" height="${height}"/>`);

Example output:

data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciIHdpZHRoPSIxIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjEiLz4=

I threw together a quick CodePen utility to create transparent SVGs with arbitrary dimensions. It's pretty basic, so you'll need to modify it if you want to add color or other features to the image.

The biggest advantage over a single-pixel image is that it allows aspect ratio to be preserved. This is important for dynamically-sized images, as layout is often performed before the src changes to a real image (if that's the intended purpose). Until the src changes, image will be square, which may be undesirable.