middleman-async-image

Middleman Async Image

Load your images asynchronously with Middleman : like Medium.

Why?

Because loading images on poor connections is really ugly. Medium as a great image loader so I develop a Gem to make it same as Middleman.

What about SEO ?

Check the SEO markdown file! (ut everithing is well)

But how exactly it works ?

This gem detect when you want to load an image asynchronously (when you're using the helper). It going to duplicate it, with really strong compression and scale in a separate folder. Then, a JS function will load the poor quality image firstly, and the HQ image asynchronously. When the great image will be loaded, the other image will disappear.

All you need to do, is using the following helper:

image_async_tag(path, options)

it works exactly as the middleman image_tag default helper.

Dependencies

Middleman Async Image need middleman-sprockets. Go to your GemFile and set the following line wherever you want:

gem "middleman-sprockets"

then, set activate :sprockets in your config.rb.

Configuration

You can set the image-dir of your choice (follow the Middleman assets directories configuration).

Simple configuration: just add gem 'middleman-async-image' to your Gemfile and activate :async_image to your config.rb. If will work whatever your images dir.

Then, go to your main CSS file and set //= require async-image. Do the same in your JS application'file.

Options

By default, compressed images are stored in the compress dir in your image folder. If you want to name this dir differently : add the following configuration to your config.rb:

activate :async_image do |i|
  i.compress_image_path = "THE_DIRECTORY_NAME_OF_YOUR_CHOISE"
end

By default again, the compression level is low (15). If you want to use a different one, you can configure it as the following:

activate :async_image do |i|
  i.quality = 10
end

You can else set the scale as you want, using i.scale but we do not recommand to use this parameter if you don't know how to use it. By default it's by .3.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/bastienrobert/middleman-async-image/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

License

See LICENSE, which applies to everything in this repository.