Really interesting. There is a significant difference on how they progressively handle the HTML.
First, clearly, there is a massive delay on the right hand column now that wasn't there before. Applies to both viewers. The content is arriving at the same speed so firefox isn't faster from that point of view. But it "feels" like Firefox is faster because of the way content is displayed on the fly.
Firefox displays the content for each table cell (think column for folks more familiar with spreadsheets than HTML page layout coding) as soon as its got it - therefor you've got something to read in the meantime and the lag is less irritating. When the right column content arrives, there's a shuffling of format to display it now that it's finally in. At first I thought the right hand column wasn't going to show!!
IE7 waits for the HTML contents of a complete row before it displays what it's got so far. In this case the entire thread, most of the stuff at the bottom of the page, and the right column. This makes for this long pause when nothing seems to happen.
Time to comment out bits of code and find the cause...
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