I’m seeing more sites that load slowly. Sites that need ten seconds or more to load [okcupid.com] over an idle DSL line are becoming common. Often, the delay is caused by page layout designed to delay loading until all the ads load. The renderer reformats frantically as the content trickles in. Sometimes it’s because the server is overloaded servicing the within-page requests. This is a big step backwards.
On the hysteria front, there’s a site devoted to AJAX page layout. [positioniseverything.net] It contains a long section on how to get a page with three columns of the same height. Javascript is used to compute the length of each column and align the columns. Differences between browsers must be handled. It doesn’t work right in IE Mac 5, Firefox 1.0, or Opera 5 and 6. (But it’s fixed in Opera 9b and Firefox 1.5!) Special cases are required for Opera 8 and Safari. All this to get three columns. Write once, debug everywhere.
