jqZoom in 1.5.4 to preload thickbox zoom images & display loading icon

[sebastians]

Hi Guys,

 

I am using the built in jqZoom (1.5.4) as product zoom and I noticed that the thickbox images (the large, zoomed-in image version) takes quite some time to load.

 

Is there a way to a) preload all large images on the product page once the page loaded? and show a loading icon when the image is not loaded fully yet and the user hovers to see the zoomed in version?

 

From different posts I learnt that 1.5.4 uses an older version of jqZoom which does not have all the features than in the current version - also I tried updating jqZoom to the new version, but this didn't work either. There must be some way to tweak the jqZoom version which comes with 1.5.4... (Before I moved to PrestaShop, I was using BigCommerce - there this functionality was there out of the box).

 

I am guessing others must have experience similar issues. How did you resolve this?

 

Thanks!