I'm wondering about the fade-in effect for images on mashable.com (see http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/google-android-logo-remixes/ for example)
As you scroll to the image, it fades in. It's not fading in on page load, only upon the actual appearance of the item on-screen.
Thanks.
It's achieved with the jQuery plugin Lazy Load.
EDIT: Here's the code they used:
if(! navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().match('ipad')){
$('#primary img').lazyload({effect:'fadeIn',placeholder:'/wp-content/themes/v6/_base/img/blank.png'});
}
Found the mootools version of the lazyload http://davidwalsh.name/mootools-lazyload
Unfortunatelly, the Lazy Load plugin not works in most actual browsers, according the own author says in the official web site.
But the jQuery Appear Plugin do almost the same thing! ;-)
There is a jQuery version of lazyload too.
A YUI version is available too. In fact, Lazy Load was inspired by it.