Speeding up background image loading in IE 6

[Jason Thompson]

I've got a set width background png (990px x 2000px), and I'm running into an issue where each of my pages reloads the background image and gives a slight flicker before the image pops in on IE 6 only. (If you can possibly believe that!)

Is there any way to speed up the priority of the background image load in IE6? I'm accomplishing the background image using CSS,

#wrapper {
text-align: left;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
padding:0;
width:990px;
height:1035px;
background:url (images/backgroundfull.png) no-repeat;
font:normal .8em Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}


I've got the wrapper div it lives in at the very top of my CSS files, and <div class="wrapper"> is at the top of my HTML.

The background image is 5.18kb so I don't think it's a weight issue.

I'm kind of wondering if it's not because each page is a different height, and the image is just filling to the required needs (which are different from page to page.) Hopefully there's a solution.

Thanks in advance!

[jcdevelopment]

I have had this problem before in IE7 and 6. Its just the way the browser renders the image from a CSS page. You will notice sometimes on browser's it looks like the image isnt even loaded and then it will pop up. Unfortunately i dont think there is an answer to this. Maybe someone else here know of it.

[demtron]

I'll bet it's just a booger with IE6. If your images are not being cached in your browser, I suppose that the load order of the elements could cause a lag as the server is asked to re-send the file each time.

[Jason Thompson]

Yeah, I'm kind of attributing it to just being one of the fun things IE 6 does. Without redoing the whole thing to be a slightly more streamlined method, I'm just not finding any easy solutions to this.

Curse you IE 6!

Perhaps it's time for people to quit using it, since it's a) old and b) crap.

[jcdevelopment]

Perhaps it's time for people to quit using it, since it's a) old and b) crap.


I second that!

[effpeetee]

I second that!
Go on! You know you really love it.

YUK

Frank, (Founder of Masochists United.)

[jcdevelopment]

Frank, you know better than i do that IE6 is an enemy to all developers. If there is a way i could go back in time and stop its release.. i would. But until then we must wait!