Although network bandwidth has increased dramatically, high-resolution images often take several seconds to load, and considerably longer on mobile devices over wireless connections. Progressive image loading techniques allow for some visual content to be displayed prior to the whole file being downloaded. In this note, we present an empirical evaluation of popular progressive image loading methods, and derive one novel technique from our findings. Results suggest a spiral variation of bilinear interlacing can yield an improvement in content recognition time. Author Keywords Progressive image loading, downloading, web browsing. ACM Classification Keywords H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. - Graphical user interfaces. General terms: Human Factors
Chris Harrison, Anind K. Dey, Scott E. Hudson