Image zooming help please.

I would like to set up a page that contains thumbnail images of photos
that I have taken. Then I would like to have the page set up so that
when someone mouses over the image it loads a larger version of the
image onto the screen (preferably centered on the screen) and then on
mouse off the large image is hidden so that the page of thumbnails can
be viewed. I would also love it if the larger images could be loading in
the background after all the thumbnails have loaded so that when the
person mouses over the image is already cached.
I have found several zooming scripts but these all seem to take the
larger image and display it at thumbnail sizes until rollover occurs.
This isn't very practical for a page full of photos as the page would
take forever to display. I like the idea of the smaller thumbnail images
loading (this would be relatively fast) and then having the larger image
display only when requested.
Finally it would be really great if this was done in such a way that I
could just have a template page that I can use for multiple pages of
photos and only need to change the image names to show the images. The
thumbnail will be called image_thmb.jpg and the image would be called
image.jpg so is it possible to have the html set up so that I could just
type in the name of the image and have the _thmb.jpg and .jpg parsed in
(using a java script or something)?
Obviously I am not an expert coder so any help would be appreciated.

Do one page with small thumbnail sized pics, and once clicked make each pic
load into an iframe, is what I'd do.

here's a sample
http://www.geocities.com/ruleone01/sample.htm
"Rhipf" <> wrote

I would like to set up a page that contains thumbnail images of photos
that I have taken. Then I would like to have the page set up so that
when someone mouses over the image it loads a larger version of the
image onto the screen (preferably centered on the screen) and then on
mouse off the large image is hidden so that the page of thumbnails can
be viewed. I would also love it if the larger images could be loading in
the background after all the thumbnails have loaded so that when the
person mouses over the image is already cached.
I have found several zooming scripts but these all seem to take the
larger image and display it at thumbnail sizes until rollover occurs.
This isn't very practical for a page full of photos as the page would
take forever to display. I like the idea of the smaller thumbnail images
loading (this would be relatively fast) and then having the larger image
display only when requested.
Finally it would be really great if this was done in such a way that I
could just have a template page that I can use for multiple pages of
photos and only need to change the image names to show the images. The
thumbnail will be called image_thmb.jpg and the image would be called
image.jpg so is it possible to have the html set up so that I could just
type in the name of the image and have the _thmb.jpg and .jpg parsed in
(using a java script or something)?
Obviously I am not an expert coder so any help would be appreciated.