Have you ever gone onto an image-heavy site and marveled at how fast it loads; at how the images just “fade in” as you scroll down the page? Cool, yes? While it may seem, to the average Joe/Josephine, that this nice little bell and or whistle is the result of a fancy and expensive tool created just for big sites like Mashable — it’s actually just a little jQuery script. It doesn’t take too much to install, either, especially if you have a WordPress site. In fact, there are at least two plugins for WordPress that make it extremely simple for you to do too.
1. jQuery Image Lazy Loader
No configuration required, this plugin is quite literally plug and play. All you have to do is install the plugin and activate it and every page on your site will be treated to faster load times and the awesome that is images that fade in on demand. The bandwidth you will save isn’t hard on your pocketbook, either.
2. Lazy Loader
Lazy Loader does exactly the same thing as jQuery Image Lazy Loader, but it gives you configuration options. For example, you can choose to only use the plugin on pages or posts, or even specific pages and posts, or by category. You can also choose a jQuery effect other than fade-in, a placeholder image, and more. This plugin is not available in the WordPress repository, so you have to download it from the source.
What experiences have you had with Lazy Loader scripts or plugins?
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