Why does IE preload every page of my site before displaying it?

[kall]

<a href="http://www.nzboards.com" target="_blank">http://www.nzboards.com</a> ... viewed in Firefox, it's fine...the page is displayed then all the images begin to load.

In IE, at least for me, the pages seem to preload, then pop onto the screen after quite a wait.

Can anyone confirm/explain this?

[Brad]

Lots of tables .

IE seems to not display info inside of tables until it has everything between the <table></table> tags. Firefox will render that info while it's coming in.

[kall]

Brilliant, a definitive answer from a source I trust.

Cheers man.

Stupid STUPID tables. And IE.

Actually, the issue got a lot better when I removed the png transparency hack..

[Brad]

Originally Posted by kall

Brilliant, a definitive answer from a source I trust.

Cheers man.

Stupid STUPID tables. And IE.

Actually, the issue got a lot better when I removed the png transparency hack..

Well that is a 'hack' and I'm sure it can slow the page down somewhat, I have not used it much and tend to stay out of IE as much as possible now a days. I'm sure it had something to do with it if you've noticed an improvment.

You might not notice the slower tables in IE if you are on broadband, at least one would hope so. Honestly firefox and IE both will load the page and display it fully in about the same ammount of time, but like you said IE seems to 'pre-load' while Firefox (and others, just using it as an example) will render data while it comes in.

With text you don't notice this to much, but when you have an image or to the 'pre-load' in IE may take a little time depending on what sort of connection you're on.

Here is a little more info on the issue:

When Internet Explorer encounters a table it measures all the content of the table before rendering so that it knows what the widths of the columns are to render the content correctly. On the other hand Firefox uses a different algorithm in that it renders the table contents progressively before it has all been passed. There are pros and cons to both approaches. In the case of progressive rendering a table it can result in an experience where content is initially displayed and then moved as the browser progresses creating a clunky and poor quality feel. On the other hand if we parse the entire table content first then it can take some time to display in the case of heavily nested tables. I?ve heard user feedback supporting both arguments and more than a few people have mentioned that they find Firefox?s rendering a little off putting in this regard.

You can see the full text here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/10/370721.aspx

[kall]

Wow, cheers for that Brad. I had actually found that blog whilst trying to find a workaround myself.

It's a bit annoying... I want a sidebar, but it's a bit on the difficult side of things to do that without wrapping at least the content under the header in <table> tags.

So, now I have the header in its own table, then a big one that wraps the rest of the page in table tags to make the rest of it have a sidebar...but that portion of the page takes a while to render on IE.