Preload Animated GIFs

Question

On my page there's an animated GIF displayed like this:

<div>
     <a id="image" style="background-image: url('http://example.com/12.gif);"></a>
</div>

When a user clicks, the background image url is switched to random url from a list like this:

<span class="image_url">http://i.imgur.com/qefIaR.gif</span>  
<span class="image_url">http://tinypics.com/96683.gif</span>
<span class="image_url">http://imageshost.com/36683.gif</span>
<span class="image_url">http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/funny_carrot.gif</span>

Now the problem is that animated GIFs load pretty slowly, so I thought I'd preload them:

    // PRELOAD IMAGES
    (function($) {
            window.onload = function () { 
            function preload(preload_img) {
                    $('<img/>')[0].src = preload_img;
                    alert(preload_img); // Debug
            }
            var preload_url;
            setTimeout(function(){
                $('.image_url').each(function(){
                    preload_url = $(this).text();
                    preload(preload_url);
                });
            }, 3000);
        }
    }(jQuery));
    // END PRELOAD

The GIFs are still loading slow however and I don't notice any difference. Is there any problem with my code or is there a way for me to confirm that it is indeed working?

Answer 1

It seems that a Google Chrome plugin (Cache Killer) was causing the problem and not the code.