[Javascript] image preloading problems

[Jon Drukman]

i'm probably going where many have gone before but a google search did not 
reveal any obvious problems.

basically i have a two panel image gallery script - entirely 
javascript.  the left panel is thumbnails, the right panel is a medium 
sized image.  the tricky part is the client wants the user to click on the 
medium image to open a new window with the full size image.  the window is 
then click-to-close.

i tried preloading the large image but many browsers don't seem to actually 
request the image!  the only one that works is ie-win.

i tried writing the window opening code to check to see if the image 
properties were set but that doesn't work reliably.  a lot of the time i 
get "information not available yet" javascript errors.

is there a way to (a) force the image to load no matter what and (b) wait 
until it has fully loaded before proceeding?

here's a short page that illustrates the problem i'm having.

http://www.desertdrama.com/gallery/jsd/bogus.html

-jsd-