In plain words, “preload” in HTML refers to a technique used to load certain resources like images, videos, or scripts before they are actually needed or displayed on a web page.
Imagine you’re visiting a webpage with a lot of images. Without preloading, the images would load one by one as you scroll down, causing delays and making the page feel slow. Preloading allows the browser to start downloading these images in the background, so when you do scroll down or click on a link to view them, they appear instantly because they are already in the browser’s cache (a storage area for web files).
In essence, “preload” helps improve the user’s experience by making the web page seem faster and more responsive because it prepares content in advance, so it’s ready when you want to see or interact with it.
Where to add
It is often better to include the preload directive in the <head><head>
Here’s an example of how to include preload directives in the <head> section:
An example:
In this example:
- We have an image file named “example.jpg” that we want to preload.
- We use the
<link>element with the “preload” attribute to specify that we want to preload the image. Theas="image"attribute tells the browser that the resource is an image. You would replace"example.jpg"with the actual path to your image file. - The rest of the HTML contains some text and an
<img>tag to display the preloaded image.
By including the <link> element with the “preload” attribute, the browser will start downloading the image in the background as soon as it encounters it in the HTML code. This means that when the user reaches the <img> tag that displays the image, it will load quickly because it’s already been preloaded.
Preloading is especially helpful for larger images or other resources that might take some time to download.