pre-loading of images

Hello Everyone,

I hope this is the correct list to post this query. I am involved in a major
redesign of a web site I support. The design has a graphical top menu which
includes rollover effects. The site is broken down into several
subdirectories, each with its own index page. The designer did not provide
script to preload images. I can create the script no problem, but my
question is which of the following would be the best practice?

1)	To only preload the images on the main, first level index page (I would
say over half the users will come through this page every time they visit).

2)	Preload the images on the index page of each subsection?

3)	Preload the images on every page.

My goal is to prevent "rollover choke" as much as possible, but I don't want
to slow the loading of pages by having the browser stop to "preload" images
it probably has already cached. Would this be the case? That is, if my
browser has preloaded and cached images 1-10, and I visit a page with a
script that calls those images back in as New, will it reload them from the
URL, or does it "know" that they are already cached?

Also, the client sometimes likes to give users direct URLs: That is, instead
of instructing them to go to the main page, or even the main page of the
section in question, and follow the links, they sometimes give users the
full path to a specific page. This is not a common event, but it does
happen.

Thanks for any advice you can give me,

-Eileen

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