Click-to-expand images could prefetch full-resolution image to speed up display about gutenberg

[jasmussen]

I'd tend to support the goal of prefetching on hover, it can substantially improve the feature. The fact that we show a zoom cursor suggests you're just zooming the image, not loading it. I recognize there's all sorts fof technical challenges to making this happen, but conceptually it would help match expectations. I'd avoid a user setting that featuers a UI, though.

[artemiomorales]

Hey @westonruter, thanks for creating this issue! We were previously loading the image on hover but it was removed due to concerns that it would cause unnecessary loading of many images, particularly on large pages. Here's a comment where it was mentioned, and the functionality was removed in this commit.

I see that there's been more discussion around matching speculation rules since then. Right now we're taking the conservative eagerness approach in the link you mentioned. I'm fine with either approach but will ping @SantosGuillamot @cbravobernal @jasmussen for thoughts.

Quick summary of the discussion: We previously had prefetching on hover but removed it, and since then there's been discussion on potentially adding it back, along with an open PR.

[westonruter]

It seems that code was preloading the image immediately on hover? If there is a 200 ms timeout to start preloading would that have prevented the issue?

[SantosGuillamot]

I'm fine with any option. Preloading the image on hover if there is a timeout seems fine to me. Back then, it was downloading most of the images while scrolling down, and I guess this would avoid that problem.

Having said that, should we have a setting/filter in case users want to change the preloading strategy?