How can i clone an image in javascript

Question

I\'m trying to clone an image in javascript, bud without loading a new one.
Normally new browsers will load an image once and there are several ways to use that image

Answer 1

javascript has provisions for this build in. here is code modified from Danny Goodman's Javascript Bible 2nd Ed p.498,500 for cacheing/preloading an image,

<img src='/images/someotherimage1.png' id='img1'>
<img src='/images/someotherimage2.png' id='img2'>
<img src='/images/someotherimage3.png' id='img3'>
<script type="text/javascript">
function assignall(numImages, x, y) {
    var img = new Image(x, y);
    img.src = '/images/someimage.png';
    var x;
    for (x=1; x <= numImages; x++) {
        document.getElementById('img'+x).src = img.src;
    }
}

assignall(3); //do it.
</script>

you can always use an array if you have a number of images to work with.

var img = new Array();
function initallimages(numImages, x, y) {
    var x;
    for (x=1; x <= numImages; x++) {
        img['img' + x] = new Image(x,y);
        img['img' + x].src = '/images/someimage.png';
    }
 }
 function assignallimages(numImages) {
    var x;
    for (x=1; x <= numImages; x++) {
        document.getElementById('img' + x).src = img['img'+x]['img' + x].src;
    }
}

initallimages(3, 320, 240);
assignallimages(3);

Answer 2

Afaik the default browser behavior is to cache images. So something like this should work the way you want:

 var sourceImage = document.createElement('img'),
     imgContainer = document.getElementById("content");
 sourceImage.src = "[some img url]";
 imgContainer.appendChild(sourceImage);

 function cloneImg(){
     imgContainer.appendChild(sourceImage.cloneNode(true));
 }

It's all pretty sop, so it should run in IE6 too (I don't have it, so can't test that). See it in action

Furthermore, you may want to check the cache setting of your IE6 browser. I remember from the not so good old days with IE<8 that I sometimes reverted to setting the cache to refresh "every time you load the page" (or someting like that).