Just wondering if anyone else had overcome this?

I've created several new pages, like the "about_us.php" page, 1 page in particular links to several other new pages, the page depends on what the user selects, non of the new pages offer products of course just information.

The problem I have is when the user selects an option which will load the next page, the page loads quickly however as I'm using java to pre load images the page appears static for several seconds (dependent of course on connection speed) could be a while, but I would like them to see the hover effect from the pre loaded images instantly. Just to clarify, the images pre loaded are for the hover effect & theres lots!

My answer would be a loading image whilst the java loads up the hover images but not sure how to start, anyone overcome this or using a loading image whilst loading pages?