New web page running very slow under IE7

[Cerddaf]

I've developing a web page under WordPress. It's got a complictaed header and footer and most pages have 3 cols full of boxes and images.

Runs fine under IE8, Firefox, Chrome, etc, but IE7 under XP runs dead slow.
Links take 10 secs to change colour when the mouse is over them, Spry drop menus take 10 to 15 seconds to appear, scrolling breaks up the entire screen. It is very bad.

Any suggestions? I've found several suggestions what to do if you are the web user, but this is a commercial site and you can't tell customers what web browser to use.

[drewpark88]

IE7 sometimes fails to handle large amounts of javascript properly. Try to condense your Javascript and lower the amount of HTTP requests if possible. To condense your Javascript visit this website: http://www.brainjar.com/js/crunch/demo.html

If this doesn't work, I am unsure of what else could be causing this. Either way, hope your issue is resolved and happy coding : )

[Cerddaf]

Interesting, looks like we're centring in on the same area. Last discovery before giving up and going to bed was that if I remove all inline stylesheet then it goes like greased lightrning.
(I'd used inline stylesheets rather than a separate css because
a) I was still developing it, and it saved having to force a new download of every revision iof the style sheet
b) some of the styles are php dependant, mainly text size where the user can select small, large or normal size text.

So first job today is to see what happens when I move all this into a separate style sheet.

[Cerddaf]

Fixed it today.
The other part of the problem was that IE7 is lousy at tiling in a background image.

[drewpark88]

Haha, I know what you mean! I usually use this bit of code for my backgrounds. Here is just an example. There are probably better ways : )

body {
	color: white;
	font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
	background: #97adc2 url(../images/background.jpg) repeat-x;
}

This is good if you cut a small piece of your designs background and tile it on the x-axis and then have a color repeat down the y-axis. You probably already know this, but if not here you go! Hope I helped at least a little : )