performance hit when using overflow:scroll?

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William Gill - 26 Aug 2008 16:22 GMT

I haven't done it in a while, but I have on occasion placed a list
inside a box of a specific height (in ems of course) to prevent the list
from taking over the entire layout. However I noticed a significant
slowing at the browser end when doing this, most notably in MSIE, to the
point that I discontinued the practice. If memory serves me (which is a
risky proposition in itself) the browser worked well until
scrollbars/scrolling became necessary. Has anyone ever noticed the use
of this property causing the browser to crawl, if so is there anything
that can be done to minimize it?

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dorayme - 26 Aug 2008 23:33 GMT

> I haven't done it in a while, but I have on occasion placed a list
> inside a box of a specific height (in ems of course) to prevent the list
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> of this property causing the browser to crawl, if so is there anything
> that can be done to minimize it?

In general best to avoid putting heights (even in em). Got a particular
URL that shows this? I would not imagine it should cause significant
delay, why not post a test case?

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dorayme

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William Gill - 27 Aug 2008 01:42 GMT

> In article <tbVsk.19363$Aw4.6323@fe115.usenetserver.com>,
>
> In general best to avoid putting heights (even in em). Got a particular
> URL that shows this? I would not imagine it should cause significant
> delay, why not post a test case?

Sorry, no URL. They seemed to slow the browser up so bad I removed them
all. Not page load time, the browser itself slowed to a crawl,
scrolling, both inside the box, and the browser window were painfully slow.

However, I just tried it again on a page in development and it doesn't
seem to do that any more. I'm a little confused since I can't seem to
duplicate the original problem. It could be IE6 or an old computer
were the root, since both have been upgraded.

as for putting heights, I frequently put text blocks in a layout in the
same manner as images, with height and width as considerations for how
the "insert" impacts the overall balance, and aesthetics of the page.
If I have a long list of links to articles, I may not want them
dominating the layout. That's why I wanted to use the height limitation
and the scroll.

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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / CSS / August 2008

performance hit when using overflow:scroll?