Official way to ask jQuery wait for all images to load before executing something

Solution 1:

With jQuery, you use $(document).ready() to execute something when the DOM is loaded and $(window).on("load", handler) to execute something when all other things are loaded as well, such as the images.

The difference can be seen in the following complete HTML file, provided you have a lot of jollyrogerNN JPEG files (or other suitable ones):

<html>
    <head>
        <script src="jquery-1.7.1.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(document).ready(function() {
                alert ("done");
            });
        </script>
    </head><body>
        Hello
        <img src="jollyroger00.jpg">
        <img src="jollyroger01.jpg">
        // : 100 copies of this in total
        <img src="jollyroger99.jpg">
    </body>
</html>

With that, the alert box appears before the images are loaded, because the DOM is ready at that point. If you then change:

$(document).ready(function() {

into:

$(window).on("load", function() {

then the alert box doesn't appear until after the images are loaded.

Hence, to wait until the entire page is ready, you could use something like:

$(window).on("load", function() {
    // weave your magic here.
});

Solution 2:

I wrote a plugin that can fire callbacks when images have loaded in elements, or fire once per image loaded.

It is similar to $(window).load(function() { .. }), except it lets you define any selector to check. If you only want to know when all images in #content (for example) have loaded, this is the plugin for you.

It also supports loading of images referenced in the CSS, such as background-image, list-style-image, etc.

waitForImages jQuery plugin

GitHub repository.
Readme.
Production source.
Development source.

Example Usage

$('selector').waitForImages(function() {
    alert('All images are loaded.');
});

Example on jsFiddle.

More documentation is available on the GitHub page.

Solution 3:

$(window).load() will work only the first time the page is loaded. If you are doing dynamic stuff (example: click button, wait for some new images to load), this won't work. To achieve that, you can use my plugin:

Demo

Download

/**
 *  Plugin which is applied on a list of img objects and calls
 *  the specified callback function, only when all of them are loaded (or errored).
 *  @author:  H. Yankov (hristo.yankov at gmail dot com)
 *  @version: 1.0.0 (Feb/22/2010)
 *  http://yankov.us
 */

(function($) {
$.fn.batchImageLoad = function(options) {
    var images = $(this);
    var originalTotalImagesCount = images.size();
    var totalImagesCount = originalTotalImagesCount;
    var elementsLoaded = 0;

    // Init
    $.fn.batchImageLoad.defaults = {
        loadingCompleteCallback: null, 
        imageLoadedCallback: null
    }
    var opts = $.extend({}, $.fn.batchImageLoad.defaults, options);

    // Start
    images.each(function() {
        // The image has already been loaded (cached)
        if ($(this)[0].complete) {
            totalImagesCount--;
            if (opts.imageLoadedCallback) opts.imageLoadedCallback(elementsLoaded, originalTotalImagesCount);
        // The image is loading, so attach the listener
        } else {
            $(this).load(function() {
                elementsLoaded++;

                if (opts.imageLoadedCallback) opts.imageLoadedCallback(elementsLoaded, originalTotalImagesCount);

                // An image has been loaded
                if (elementsLoaded >= totalImagesCount)
                    if (opts.loadingCompleteCallback) opts.loadingCompleteCallback();
            });
            $(this).error(function() {
                elementsLoaded++;

                if (opts.imageLoadedCallback) opts.imageLoadedCallback(elementsLoaded, originalTotalImagesCount);

                // The image has errored
                if (elementsLoaded >= totalImagesCount)
                    if (opts.loadingCompleteCallback) opts.loadingCompleteCallback();
            });
        }
    });

    // There are no unloaded images
    if (totalImagesCount <= 0)
        if (opts.loadingCompleteCallback) opts.loadingCompleteCallback();
};
})(jQuery);

Solution 4:

For those who want to be notified of download completion of a single image that gets requested after $(window).load fires, you can use the image element's load event.

e.g.:

// create a dialog box with an embedded image
var $dialog = $("<div><img src='" + img_url + "' /></div>");

// get the image element (as a jQuery object)
var $imgElement = $dialog.find("img");

// wait for the image to load 
$imgElement.load(function() {
    alert("The image has loaded; width: " + $imgElement.width() + "px");
});