title: Displaying Photos in a ListView, how to get adapter to preload before users can see the list?
body: <p>I need to display a number of photos in a list view which are pulled from urls in a list view.  Unfortunately there is some variance in the download time.  The actual downloading is being done in the adapter for the ListView.  these downloads are runOnUIThread.  (Yes, i know this is horrible design).  So whats happening is the images are being displayed when the download completes, which is causing the images to show up slowly and in a bit of disorder, although I am caching them.</p>
  
  <p>I intent to rewrite the logic, but in the meantime, I would like to know to get the adapter to take action before the photos actually need to be displayed.  In other words I want to run the adapter before I actually intend to display the list to the user.  How can I do this?  I want this downloading to take place before the user ever sees the list.</p>
  
  <p>In other words I need the below method in the adapter to run before the list is ever visible to the user:</p>
  
  <pre><code> public View getView(final int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) 
   {
       // Inside here I am requesting the photo bitmap from url and setting to ImageView.
   }
  </code></pre>