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Just FYI, I see the shift in both Win Chrome and FF. Haven't checked IE. Win XP system.

Sorry to butt in here, but I took a quick look and I think this has to do with the scroll bar. It's only when the scroll bar appears (which is when enough of the page has been loaded to require a scrollbar) that the header shifts. The only real solution I know for this (on a centered layout, which can't be anchored to the left side of the screen) is to put an invisible div in the background that has a height of 101%, which forces the scrollbar to always be present. But Michael, you probably know better than I do.

I would argue that this isn't really a bug at all, but rather a matter of how browsers work. We shouldn't try to manipulate the presence of the scroll bar. If we really want to address this (and I think we have much bigger fish to fry), then we should focus on optimizing CSS and markup so that the page loads faster.

Zach

I agree with Zach.

Ok - interested in hearing your reasons, Matt. I'm a pretty strong believer in the principle that a website should not do things that interfere with the basic functioning of the browser. Websites shouldn't break back and forward button functionality, for example, and they shouldn't manipulate scroll bars (except, perhaps, to turn them off entirely for the occasional pop-up, but then who uses popups anymore anyhow?). If we want to change how the page is rendered, the correct way to do it is to address it at the level of the DOM and the order in which styles are declared / applied, not by relying on a hack. What I was trying to say was that the problem you're identifying is not something that needs to be addressed in and of itself; it's the (correct) side effect of another problem, which is messy inheritance in the CSS and less-than-ideal markup.

I wonder if it would make a difference to simply combine the CSS into a single file (as a short-term solution). It might be worth packing / minifying the CSS so that the browser can parse and process it in a single pass instead of waiting for multiple stylesheets to load.

Zach

Matt, can I get some feedback on this? Since moving to the new server, and the new (much svelter) theme, the load lag has decreased by a lot on my end. Is this true for you too?