Site Loading and Caching and Counters and Scroll Bars..

Hey guys, sorry to ask a question at such a low postage count, but you guys seem nice enough to not mind
So a few of questions for my webpage

1) Can I make it so I can choose which images are loaded first? Such as I want the background image to load up first, then some others, then others etc. (also includes 1 .swf)

2) Caching, my site is in full .html so if I choose to update my site, caching affects it, since it loads what it has 'downloaded' should I say into memory. Is there any way around this? (I do not want to get rid of caching altogether, since it'll be a bother to load)

3) Is there anyway using only .html to have a counter. A counter that does not give information to a third party for me to see, but just a counter that shows how much hits the site had, (nothing else needed)

4) Is it possible to add a custom scrollbar to my iframe in my site?

edit- forgot 4th question
thnx for reading this and I look forward to hearing from you guys

iframes behave exactly like normal pages, so if you know how to add custom scrollbars, just include that in the css page for the iframe. but note, they will only work in IE. uh, you can't choose which images are loaded first (goes top to bottom, so unless you put what you want in like that and then rearrange it with css you're outta luck). depending on peoples browsers (and taking the normality), your site should re-download if its different on the server from the last time they saw it. and for the straight html, nope. not without javascript or flat files or php or some type of language.

Javascript sounds good, could you please explain how I would go about putting a counter on with java?

Does your host lack php support? Or do you just want to keep the .html file ending? In the latter case you can always tell the server to parse .html as php and then use a php counter (which there are millions of). To parse .html as php simply add the following line to the .htaccess file in the folder where the html-file is placed:
Note that the .htaccess file is hidden in most ftp clients by default. Some hosts also won't let you play with this file.

My host doesn't support PHP, Perl (CGI directory), ASP, JSP, MySQL, Access databases

Well, I guess you have to rely on a client-side counter then. Google javascript hit counter and take a pick. In the long run you might want to consider getting a host with at least php and/or perl installed.

Let's just say, my site has dodgy content (nothing sick), thus the reason I don't like to have a third-party involved

This usually helps if you don't want the browser to cache your site.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

Though I hear it sometimes don't work. You may want to read this article on this.

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/nocache.html

Well, as I said don't want no caching, takes too long to load everytime :p
Damn, really wanted to see how many hits i get a day

Like I said, find a javascript counter and use it until your host installs php, cgi or similar.

One more question
is it possible to change the colour of the hyperlinks from blue to another colour?

include in the head

link/active are links, period. visited is if they've been to the page already (cached). hover is on mouseover.

username = JackDoff

appropriate username it would seem!