Has anyone else here experienced extreme slowness with the asp:menu on pages containing large amounts of data (2 - 3 meg)?  Removing the security trimming seems to have helped however that is not a solution.

I switched from an xml provider to a sql provider and have noticed some increase in performance however on these large pages, it will still take 2 - 3 seconds when you mouse over a menu item for it to pop out.

Unfortunately the only real 'solution' I have found so far is viewing the pages in FireFox.  Oddly enough, in FireFox, the pages load like lightning and the menu works fantastically.
No, making the pages smaller is not an option - it is many rows of data in nested datalists.

I had posted this on Microsofts forums however they removed it and suggested I post here. 
Wrong forum or they don't like it pointed out when FireFox renders their own code better than IE?

hi!

try to use CSS Friendly Adapters -  rendered HTML will be not so complicated (no tables).

orzeh 

Yes, CSS adapters are the best way to go if using the standard Menu control; they'll produce more lightweight and therefore faster pages.

 It also depends upon the browser version. Javascript is used for IE versions earlier than 7 and the IE Javascript engine is slower than the Firefox one.

Wow - getting the menu converted over to CSS was quite simple.
Much easier even when you re-read the two lines of instructions that CodePlex provides and realize that the .browser file goes into the APP_Browsers directory...

Unfortunately, once you get it rendering in CSS you realize that everything you had set up in your skin - for the most part - is now totally ignored.

After a bit of searching I came across the whitepaper and the sample css which helped tremndously.

Thank you all - my asp:menu is now extremely fast!!