Mouseover Image Popup

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.

P.S. Ideally it would be nice if the larger image were to open as a new
layer on top of the thumbnail page so that the lay out of the thumbnails
is static.

Rhipf <Rhipf (AT) NOSPAM (DOT) Bigfoot.com> wrote in
news:MPG.1bc72d2f9775f99d989689 (AT) news (DOT) gosiouxlookout.com:

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.

Most people would regard this as surprising behavior. The standard (i.e.
expected by most users) way to do this is to present a gallery of *proper*
thumbnails (that is to say, images that have been correcly scaled down with
an image editor) in which clicking on a particular thumbnail results in
loading a full-sized picture.

What you're trying to achieve is not only surprising behavior for the user,
it's something that can only work if *everything* goes just right. That's
not something you can count on when you're dealing with the WWW. Nobody
can keep Mr. Murphy from paying you an occasional visit, but what you're
trying to do amounts to buying him a first-class plane ticket and putting
him up in the most expensive suite at your local hotel.

Web users are far less likely than Web designers to appreciate pages that
jump around spectaculary when the move their mouse.