PHP is not an answer. You should do some javascript to show the loading state in the statusbar. And even, it won't help you very much.
Internet Explorer supports object.readyState for eg images...
if(document.myImage.readyState == 4)
window.status='Image loaded'
And you could place around the page this:
<script>window.status='10% loaded';</script>
You got it, place that around 10% far in the code, then with 20%,...
But well, all this will rather slow-down the loading process for what gain? Almost nothing, since most browsers YET have a progressbar right next to the statusbar...
You still wanna do it? Ok. Prepare a couple of days of code.
Make a php script that will
-parse the page for images
-retrieve their filenames
-check those file's size
-write it out somewhere in a javascript
Then make a javascript that will
-'ping' images' readyState
-count a percentage depending on the images' filesize
-show the ratio to the statusbar.
