While using HTTPWatch in IE7 to investigate why a specific page is loading slowly, I discovered that the issue only occurs in IE7 and not other browsers. After some investigation, I found that a single jquery line setting a border on two containers was causing the slowdown.
Interestingly, when I removed the second line of code, the page loaded much faster in IE7 - from 7 seconds down to just 2 seconds.
$('.ccl, .ccr').css({'min-height':maxHeight});
$('.ccl, .ccr').css({'border':'1px solid #ccc'});
This is a new problem for me, and I'm curious if others have encountered it as well. Despite the code working correctly, it seems to be impacting performance in IE7.