JSF2 / Primefaces layout performance

Question

Right now I'm using a full page layout and p:layoutUnits and page composition in my webapp. I have a fixed header with a menubar, and a content layoutunit, and that's all. It was easy to set up, but in IE (7) when I navigate to a new page the whole page reloads (visibly), the header is cleared then loaded, and - even more annoyingly - the menubar is displayed for a second with all the menuitems visible.

In other browsers this effect is not really visible, sadly, IE 7 is my target.

Now I'm thinking about saying goodbye to p:layoutUnits and implementing the layout with simple css magic and fixed div for the header - would it improve display in IE? Is there anything else I can do to make it faster and smoother? I'd like it to look like the header is not changing at all, only the content.

How about using iframe? Would it allow bookmarkable URLs?

Answer 1

I've finally decided to say goodbye to p:layout. I have a long table that's two or three times the size of the screen. If I put it in a scrollable layoutUnit then the scrolling is so slow that it is really annoying (tested in IE, Firefox and Chrome - equally slow). Perhaps this widget was not intended for this kind of use (displaying scrollable, long content), but now it is clear that I'll have to do a proper CSS design and stay with raw DIVs.

Nevertheless it was great for quickly putting together an application GUI that can be shown to customers.