Dealing with IE's delayed display of table content

IE waits till table content is all loaded before displaying it

[pr0fess0r]

Hi guys,
I've built a site in HTML for a client and am having problems because a large section of the site doesnt appear in IE for up to 30 seconds, because I think IE is loading all of the content in the main table before displaying it. The problem is magnified by the fact that there is a quite a heavy Flash banner ad in there too.

Initially the site was one big centred table. Once I learned about the IE issue, I broke it up into smaller tables. I also tried to make sure I was specifying heights and widths everywhere I could.

The center section of the site is a problem because it's three columns, and has to be wrapped in a table or a div, and it doesnt seem to appear in IE until all of it's content is loaded (it's fast in any other browser).

I've also tried rebuilding the site in CSS, and using nested float: left; and float: right; DIVs to get my columns to work, but I still have the same problem.

Can anyone suggest a way to build the center section so that IE will load it in parts, making the browsing experience better?

Many thanks in advance for any tips

[edited by: tedster at 5:01 am (utc) on April 29, 2008]

[tedster]

Hello pr0fess0r, and welcome to the forums.

Is your source code also calling any javascript files? IE stops all other rendering and downloading completely while it downloads javascript, and this is often a cause for a slower page load. A fix for this is to move external js calls to the end of the source ocde, as much as possible.

[pr0fess0r]

Hi, Yes there are 3 big chunks of javascript that are openx code to load the banners. How could I call them at the end of the source code?
PS I did speed the site up to a large degree by using CSS, however loading still pauses when it hits the banners..
cheers

[tedster]

You may be stuck on that particular point, as long as you are using openx - or calling out to any third party server. Even paid analytics code can slow things down.

You kight find some useful ideas in this recent thread: Speeding Up Your Site - best practices for the front end [webmasterworld.com].

I'm using the principles discussed there with my clients, and it's making a lot of difference. Definitely watch the video that is linked from the first spot - it's inspiring to hear from someone who actually does rigorous testing and discovers new, unexpected factors.