I think conceivably if there is an image you know you want showing up ASAP, you'd want to set loading="eager" on those ones..... But for the most part, the lazy images already above the fold will be loading more or less instantly.
All else equal, lazy is the way to go, but if we see that some images are being wrongly deferred, we could instruct the browser otherwise.
Then I kinda wonder why loading="lazy" isn't the default behavior for browsers (those that support it). It sounds like it's the way to go in 99% of the cases. And for the rest of the cases, you set loading="eager" or whatever is appropriate to overwrite default behavior.
it is costly for browsers to calculate the current position of each image and cross-reference the scrollbar data, in addition to doing such a thing they would break various image-based tracker mechanisms
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I think conceivably if there is an image you know you want showing up ASAP, you'd want to set
loading="eager"on those ones..... But for the most part, the lazy images already above the fold will be loading more or less instantly.All else equal, lazy is the way to go, but if we see that some images are being wrongly deferred, we could instruct the browser otherwise.
Then I kinda wonder why
loading="lazy"isn't the default behavior for browsers (those that support it). It sounds like it's the way to go in 99% of the cases. And for the rest of the cases, you setloading="eager"or whatever is appropriate to overwrite default behavior.it is costly for browsers to calculate the current position of each image and cross-reference the scrollbar data, in addition to doing such a thing they would break various image-based tracker mechanisms
That second part sounds like a net win to me.