[thelist] (how to stop) IE6 rendering before it has fully compiled

[Matt Warden]

On 11/20/06, Skellos <skellos at skellos.com> wrote:

> 2) You can set 'Invisible' the things you wish not to be displayed
> right away. Using the StyleDisplay : none. And at the end of your
> page, after it load, or in your body, you can use a timer-set delay
> Javascript action that will switch those invisible to visible.
> Or, use Lee's code as he suggested which makes everything invisible
> until the page is finished loading.

... which would make even the most basic of brochureware websites
completely useless to anyone without JavaScript turned on. All this
just to avoid a flicker?

Well, let's be honest -- what we're really trying to avoid is a
redesign. The OP even said it in his post:

"Based on this description you might call it an innately terrible
site, but I'm past changing its nature now..."

So, if that's our constraint, then I guess we're left with hacks that
attack symptoms and not the cause.

If you refuse to clean up your 60 kb of css, then the *least* you can
do is minify the production file and configure the server to send it
gzipped. Same with your external javascript files (you can even
automate most of this process with jslint and then jsmin). Also, if
you are referencing multiple external JS and CSS files, concatenate
them in a sensible way (keeping in mind the overhead each file request
adds and balancing that with what makes sense from a caching
perspective). And, stop using window.onload to fire JavaScript events
that dont need to wait for the entire page to load (99.9% of them fall
into this category).

That's about all you can do. The solutions which completely destroy
accessibility aren't really valid options. What you really need is a
redesign.

-- 
Matt Warden
Cleveland, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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