Josh, >Well, I feel stupid. it's not the join that's taking so long, it's >the $( "really big DOM string with 1,000 rows and 3 columns") that >takes so dang long on IE7. After all of this rambling, does anyone >have any options for me to try? > >Sorry, for the self-dialog here.
Just for testing purposes, you might want to test in IE by just using the DOM property innerHTML to set the table. This will at least tell you where the majority of overhead is coming from. Is it from jQuery's processing routines or for the actual DOM creation. In my experience IE6 is sluggish when trying to generate large tables on the fly. (This is pre-jQuery coding as well.) -Dan
