Patent ID: 8280197

Claim:
A method, comprising: sending a request from an application executing on a computing device to load a plurality of images in parallel onto the computing device; receiving the request at an image loader executing on the computing device; in response to the request, loading, in parallel, the plurality of images into storage of the computing device using the image loader, wherein a current state of each image of the plurality of images is set to a loading state; while loading: determining, by the application, that an image of the plurality of images is not to be used, and requesting that loading of the not-used image be canceled; and for each image in the plurality of images, the image loader: determining whether the loading of the image is requested to be canceled, in response to determining that the loading of the image is not requested to be canceled: marking the current state of the image as loaded and displaying the image, and in response to determining that the loading of the image is requested to be canceled: marking the current state of the image as no-image and recycling storage allocated for the image.