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Sometimes I open a page with way too many images displayed sequentially (think of a really long blog post with dozens of big images); web pages built like that have some negative impact for the visitor, like consuming a lot of bandwith (specially for images with big filesizes), and for specially lower spec machines slowing down the browser, specially in case of a page with lots of animated GIFs.

Web devs can use a technique called "lazy loading" to deferring the request of images from the server until the very moment the browser tries to render them (or something like that). But it is implemented by the creator of the site, on its source code, out of control of the user.

I was wondering if there's a way to enforce lazy-loading on all the sites I visit (or a subset of them). Maybe a browser plugin / addon? Maybe an userscript? I want to enforce lazy loading for any site I visit, if that's even possible.

I have already searched the Mozilla Add-ons site with no success. I have searched Google as well, but everything I can find is aimed at web devs.

I'd strongly prefer a Firefox add-on that works on any OS, but I'm open to suggestions.

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    Found nothing solid so far. Have found question over at SO and am following that up.
    – Nick Dickinson-Wilde
    Mar 23, 2014 at 20:30
  • Can you tell your OS, RAM and Internet specifications.
    – TomJ
    Mar 24, 2014 at 3:42
  • @TomJ Ubuntu 12.04, Fedora 20, Windows 7, possibly XP and 8 as well. Firefox is my main browser and Chrome the secondary. RAM varies from 1 to 6 GB. Internet connection varies from 1 to 100 mbps.
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Mar 24, 2014 at 22:09
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    I think he means any website in general. I wonder if a userscript would work
    – Journeyman Geek
    Mar 25, 2014 at 11:50
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    @ThatBrazilianGuy Yeah I was guessing so - it probably wouldn't be far past my abilities but right now I don't have time. I'll remember it though and if I end up having some more time and this hasn't had a different answer you can expect a solution to be done up. Assuming I can insert it early enough in the load process anyways.
    – Nick Dickinson-Wilde
    Mar 27, 2014 at 15:24

2 Answers 2

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There's a Firefox plugin called ImageBlock, which adds a button that disables all image loading. This is what google image search looks like as a result:

google images no images

If you want to view specific images, you can disable the plugin by clicking the button and right click -> reload image on any image you want to view, or to view all images, reload the entire page.

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    Well, I do want to see the images, I just don't want the browser to load them all at the same time. This is a handy plugin, but for my use case it's too trouble to right click on every image and reload it.
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Mar 28, 2014 at 15:04
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This may not be an answer in the exact form you are looking for, but if you don't mind switching browsers, you can try Opera browser, which has Opera Turbo, a service where websites are compressed (including images) via Opera's servers before they are sent to you, resulting in "up to 5 times" faster load times.

For Firefox, there's also the fasTun plugin but I have not tried it myself.

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  • Please consider merging your two answers into one as has been discussed here: meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/58/94
    – Angelo Fuchs
    Apr 10, 2014 at 9:20
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    @AngeloNeuschitzer in the linked discussion, there's a higher voted answer expressing the opposite. I don't think merging makes sense because the two answers are very different and can't be compared either.
    – congusbongus
    Apr 10, 2014 at 9:31
  • fasTun depends on a service that is no longer operational.
    – That Brazilian Guy
    Jun 22, 2014 at 14:17

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