Lazy Load Images in 2 seconds

Publish Date: Jun 5 '20

81 12

The Story

I have this internal tool for some purpose. Now, this has a page where it displays like 50+ images grid in smaller sizes.
The page always load very slow and I hated it.

So We can solve this by properly generating smaller thumbnails of the images and/or lazy loading the images.

This isn't really isn't used by anyone else other than me. So I decided to skip the thumbnail part and add 2 lines of js to lazy load the hack out of these stupid images.

Then I stumbled upon something I completely forgot that existed.

loading="lazy"

<img src="..." loading="lazy" />

That's pretty much everything you need to make your images lazy load.

Now this is an HTML5 Feature and probably might not be supported by every browser out there.
It might not bring fancy animations and fade transitions onto the table

But IT WORKS!!

The previous webpage is atleast 3 times as fast.

TL;DR

Use the loading attribute in HTML

<img src="..." loading="lazy" />

Update

You definitely should not use it in anything important.
You need a polyfill to get it work on all browsers.
Read my story and see why I used it.

Comments 12 total

Bernard BakerJun 5, 2020
Good tip 🤸.
Luca NerlichJun 5, 2020
"The previous webpage is atleast 3 times as fast."

Thats a bit of a stretch without actually providing any example.
- Geon GeorgeJun 6, 2020
  Yeah, I can understand that. But I'm just sharing how it felt like.
  This isn't really a proper study. Just sharing the problem I faced and how I solved.
  I really don't care about how much milliseconds I saved or if it works on Safari on iPhone 5 whatever.
  This is a tool used by me and it works for me. So really doesn't matter
Peter LauJun 6, 2020
LOL, caniuse.com/#search=lazy Better to provide some polyfill version
SagarJun 6, 2020
Lazy loading attribute is supported in latest browser version so you may need to include polyfill to provide support for older browsers.
- Geon GeorgeJun 6, 2020
  Yeah, But if you read the story part you'll understand why it was perfect for me
Daniel SchulzJun 6, 2020
You should keep in mind that the loading behaviour changes wildly from browser to browser.
Chrome loads images that are a long distance out of the viewport. Native lazy loading wouldn't even kick in here on short pages.
Firefox loads images only if they are in the viewport, leading to visible loading times for the user as she scrolls.
As of now, there's no way to control that behaviour.
Liam HallJun 6, 2020
For better performance you can also add width and height to the image tag if it’s available to you - you’re still able to force responsiveness through your CSS.
- Geon GeorgeJun 6, 2020
  Yeah, this is something that could be done. But in my case, it didn't really matter
YoavJun 6, 2020
That doesn't work yet on Apple devices...
labibllacaJun 6, 2020
best stuff I learned this week. thanks a lot.
Mohammad JavedJun 7, 2020
Make sure to add a fallback for browsers that don't support native lazy loading.

I love the native lazy loading. It's a big game-changer.

Add comment

Geon George @geongeorge