Since posting my response, I have discovered two things:

1. The ad-forced delay does not apply to Firefox (probably because the pop-under is still present).
2. There is an option to get an ad-free version of the service with a subscription fee.

Therefore, I must make a clarification: I have no objection to sites being profitable, regardless of how irritating I find certain types of advertising.

Now that I know there is an ad-free, paid subscription option, I will almost certainly be availing myself of it.

(note: that doesn't make my earlier statement inaccurate, just incomplete...)

- Woody -

I subscribed to the magazine, and converted to ad-free mode on FT, so what do I find? The ads are gone, but the stupid rendering delay is still there.

And again, it is only on IE. Firefox renders entire pages almost instantly.

FT is intermittently slow for me. Other sites (heresy I know) seem fine.

From what I can tell it doesn't seem like there is a significant/constant difference between loading in IE and loading pages in Fire Fox. Things seems to be running quickly today as well.

If you are using any add ons for IE this could be the source of your slow down in IE, Woody.

Thanks,

Sorry Mr Techie - it has been painfully slow today both at work and here at home. Takes ages to load a page. BA has lots of firewalls I know but I don't at home.

Not intermittent - constant this side of the pond.

(THis is my first post on this Forum in all these years!)

Anyone else experiencing a constant slow down today? Not slow here at all today from what I have seen.

Today I have had a lot of errors where the page times out. No other site has done that for me. We're on a 20 meg / 2 meg up FiOs Connection.

Phil

I've also had errors in loading today, but only 25% of the time or less.

It was awful yesterday from two locations. Loading far better today.

Tim,

Thank you for your response. I am running on a reasonably fast cable connection in the Seattle area right now. Unfortunately, the delay I am experiencing (in IE) is real. It occurs after the FT header (and banner ad if not logged in) renders, and before the first boxed zone (breadcrumb, login details). Though it does not seem quite as long as it was over the weekend.

In addition, there is still a clear difference in rendering performance between IE and Firefox.

I would be willing (given what I know about IE) to chalk some of it up to IE's penchant for waiting until it gets the /table tag before it will render a table, if it weren't for the fact that the delay doesn't seem to be dependent upon the amount of content to follow. A two message page pauses just as long as a 10 message page.

I hope this helps...

I normally browse exclusively with Firefox, and have noticed only small delays. However, today was using IE7, and I couldn't believe it - it's like Flyertalk is crashing IE --- the page starts to render, (up to an ad, and only the header and ad are displayed), then big delay, then when something else flashes before my eyes, IE goes to a page telling me that my Internet connection isn't working. If I try and refresh the FT page, same thing.
Doesn't happen with all the pages, but once it happens, I basically can't browse Flyertalk without completely closing IE7 (I can browse other sites). It appears to me that the problem is related to advertising/ad code.

IE7 is also complaining, on pages that do render all the way, of being done, but with errors on the page.

I've been having that happen a lot, but in FireFox. I think the problem is with the ad servers, which display before the FT page. If they timeout, the browser will report an error rather than display the rest of the page.

I normally use IE.

I've been noticing the delay issue in the last month of two when the new ad format started. Even though it's not all the time, it would take much longer to load the page. Usually the ad "header" would render but it would take much longer to see the whole page. Sometimes the error messages would pop up stating the timeout or something, then the FT pages fail to load.

When it does happen (slow loading or browser timeout error), normally by refreshing the page will take care of the problem for me. I am not techie at all. However, I would expect to see a smooth integration between the ad portion and FT pages so the loading won't be interfered/abandomed due to the flasher ad server or something.

We are making some changes this evening that should minimize this issue. Thanks for all the input.

I assume it is in place, because things are looking a lot faster here!

Thanks!