How to display a loading screen while site content loads

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/244183

Question

I'm working on a site which contains a whole bunch of mp3s and images, and I'd like to display a loading gif while all the content loads.

I have no idea how to achieve this, but I do have the animated gif I want to use.

Any suggestions?

Was it helpful?

Solution

Typically sites that do this by loading content via ajax and listening to the readystatechanged event to update the DOM with a loading GIF or the content.

How are you currently loading your content?

The code would be similar to this:

function load(url) {
    // display loading image here...
    document.getElementById('loadingImg').visible = true;
    // request your data...
    var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
    req.open("POST", url, true);

    req.onreadystatechange = function () {
        if (req.readyState == 4 && req.status == 200) {
            // content is loaded...hide the gif and display the content...
            if (req.responseText) {
                document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = req.responseText;
                document.getElementById('loadingImg').visible = false;
            }
        }
    };
    request.send(vars);
}

There are plenty of 3rd party javascript libraries that may make your life easier, but the above is really all you need.

OTHER TIPS

You said you didn't want to do this in AJAX. While AJAX is great for this, there is a way to show one DIV while waiting for the entire <body> to load. It goes something like this:

<html>
  <head>
    <style media="screen" type="text/css">
      .layer1_class { position: absolute; z-index: 1; top: 100px; left: 0px; visibility: visible; }
      .layer2_class { position: absolute; z-index: 2; top: 10px; left: 10px; visibility: hidden }
    </style>
    <script>
      function downLoad(){
        if (document.all){
            document.all["layer1"].style.visibility="hidden";
            document.all["layer2"].style.visibility="visible";
        } else if (document.getElementById){
            node = document.getElementById("layer1").style.visibility='hidden';
            node = document.getElementById("layer2").style.visibility='visible';
        }
      }
    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="downLoad()">
    <div id="layer1" class="layer1_class">
      <table width="100%">
        <tr>
          <td align="center"><strong><em>Please wait while this page is loading...</em></strong></p></td>
        </tr>
      </table>
    </div>
    <div id="layer2" class="layer2_class">
        <script type="text/javascript">
                alert('Just holding things up here.  While you are reading this, the body of the page is not loading and the onload event is being delayed');
        </script>
        Final content.      
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

The onload event won't fire until all of the page has loaded. So the layer2 <DIV> won't be displayed until the page has finished loading, after which onload will fire.

How about with jQuery? A simple...

$(window).load(function() {      //Do the code in the {}s when the window has loaded 
  $("#loader").fadeOut("fast");  //Fade out the #loader div
});

And the HTML...

<div id="loader"></div>

And CSS...

#loader {
      width: 100%;
      height: 100%;
      background-color: white;
      margin: 0;
}

Then in your loader div you would put the GIF, and any text you wanted, and it will fade out once the page has loaded.

First, set up a loading image in a div. Next, get the div element. Then, set a function that edits the css to make the visibility to "hidden". Now, in the <body>, put the onload to the function name.

#Pure css method

Place this at the top of your code (before header tag)

<style> .loader {
  position: fixed;
  background-color: #FFF;
  opacity: 1;
  height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  z-index: 10;
}
</style>
<div class="loader">
  Your Content For Load Screen
</div>

And This At The Bottom after all other code (except /html tag)

<style>
.loader {
    -webkit-animation: load-out 1s;
    animation: load-out 1s;
    -webkit-animation-fill-mode: forwards;
    animation-fill-mode: forwards;
}

@-webkit-keyframes load-out {
    from {
        top: 0;
        opacity: 1;
    }

    to {
        top: 100%;
        opacity: 0;
    }
}

@keyframes load-out {
    from {
        top: 0;
        opacity: 1;
    }

    to {
        top: 100%;
        opacity: 0;
    }
}
</style>

This always works for me 100% of the time

There's actually a pretty easy way to do this. The code should be something like:

<script type="test/javascript">

    function showcontent(x){

      if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
        xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
      } else {
        xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');
      }

      xmlhttp.onreadystatechange = function() {
        if(xmlhttp.readyState == 1) {
            document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = "<img src='loading.gif' />";
        }
        if(xmlhttp.readyState == 4 && xmlhttp.status == 200) {
          document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = xmlhttp.responseText;
        } 
      }

      xmlhttp.open('POST', x+'.html', true);
      xmlhttp.setRequestHeader('Content-type','application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
      xmlhttp.send(null);

    }

And in the HTML:

<body onload="showcontent(main)"> <!-- onload optional -->
<div id="content"><img src="loading.gif"></div> <!-- leave img out if not onload -->
</body>

I did something like that on my page and it works great.

You can use <progress> element in HTML5. See this page for source code and live demo. http://purpledesign.in/blog/super-cool-loading-bar-html5/

here is the progress element...

<progress id="progressbar" value="20" max="100"></progress>

this will have the loading value starting from 20. Of course only the element wont suffice. You need to move it as the script loads. For that we need JQuery. Here is a simple JQuery script that starts the progress from 0 to 100 and does something in defined time slot.

<script>
        $(document).ready(function() {
         if(!Modernizr.meter){
         alert('Sorry your brower does not support HTML5 progress bar');
         } else {
         var progressbar = $('#progressbar'),
         max = progressbar.attr('max'),
         time = (1000/max)*10, 
         value = progressbar.val();
        var loading = function() {
        value += 1;
        addValue = progressbar.val(value);
        $('.progress-value').html(value + '%');
        if (value == max) {
        clearInterval(animate);
        //Do Something
 }
if (value == 16) {
//Do something 
}
if (value == 38) {
//Do something
}
if (value == 55) {
//Do something 
}
if (value == 72) {
//Do something 
}
if (value == 1) {
//Do something 
}
if (value == 86) {
//Do something 
    }

};
var animate = setInterval(function() {
loading();
}, time);
};
});
</script>

Add this to your HTML file.

<div class="demo-wrapper html5-progress-bar">
<div class="progress-bar-wrapper">
 <progress id="progressbar" value="0" max="100"></progress>
 <span class="progress-value">0%</span>
</div>
 </div>

Hope this will give you a start.

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