changing image-loading handling.

[Lex Hider <alexeijh pacific net au>]

Hi,

as in
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-list/2003-November/msg00027.html
I would like to be able to change the way that image-loading is handled.

I see this almost like an accessibility thing.
Being able to turn-off automatic image-loading on a slow connection 
makes a massive difference to the speed that you can get pages on
screen. So its handy for those of still on dialup but also places like
library's which normally have crippling connection speeds where the 
images being loaded are most likely ads or extraneous anyway.
It is just handy for controlling your bandwidth. If you are downloading
some files while surfing, you can turn off images so that the bandwidth
is used for downloading and so the file is downloaded quicker and you
can surf quicker.
Also for people with small download limits from their isp account, 
why use up your quota on images if you can help it. 

But it is most useful for those with slow connections.

Currently it appears as the only way to change image-loading is by
setting about:config network.image.imageBehavior where 0 loads all
images, 1 loads images from this domain and 2 blocks all images.

The problem with this current situation is that

a) this solution is not documented, not obvious, and not part of the
main preferences utility.

b) when images are turned off you can't see where they should or would
be. By this I mean you should see a placeholder but no picture. Like
when you have loaded a page normally but the image has yet to be 
downloaded. 
***
I hope placeholders is clear and correct terminology ;)
***
How do other browsers tackle this issue. [I think it's a good idea to 
see what the competition is doing before formulating epiphany's
 solution.

IE - I don't know about 6.x but 5.x had an extra thingy you could 
download that allowed for this. note I haven't used ie for ages so
that's why the last sentence was pretty vague.

firefox - don't currently have it installed but assume it's the same
or similar to mozilla.

opera, galeon and safari - don't have any of these installed at the
moment but I would be interested to know what they do.

dillo - I did send in a patch for dillo which I don't think ever got
accepted.

konqueror - I think K has the best solution I have seen. [I don't know
if it's the best possible or the one epiphany should adopt though].
there is "configure konqueror"->"web behavior"->"automatically 
load images" which is a checkbox.
When it's selected images are download like normal.
When not selected there is a button added to the toolbar 
called "display images on page". It is not a toggle button.
When you load a page no images are downloaded and there are
place-holders where they would be. This is very important so that
you can see: the structure of the page, images that are links, 
when you do click on "display images" the page isn't continually 
re-rendered and scrolling on you.

mozilla - preferences->privacy & security-> images.
image-acceptance-policy. you can choose to download: all images,
images from the same domain, no images. It also allows you to 
block images from certain domains. While this is handy IMHO
it probably is overkill for epiphany.
My only real problem with the way mozilla handles this is that
you can't see the placeholders which is annoying.
especially trying to find hrefs on images.

My name is Lex and I'm a new epiphany user having used in the past IE,
galeon, mozilla, dillo, w3m, lynx, links and konqueror.

I have made a few patches to dillo but am pretty much ignorant of the
 source of mozilla or epiphany.

I hope you can see I have thought about this issue a fair bit and
think that it is a very important and useful feature.

I know the Epiphany philosophy is GNOME's: sensible defaults and no
useless options so I am interested on what people think on this issue.

Thankx,

Lex.

PS - thanks to noda for taking me through a few of the issues on
#epiphany.