why does ie8 flash white background for a fraction of a second on refresh?

Question

I have a problem with IE8. When the age reloads/refreshes it flashes white. My client is very unhappy and I'm unable to find any kind of answer anywhere. PLEASE can anyone shed any light. Here's a link to a site with the issue: http://www.gingergraphicdesign.com

Answer 1

Your inline CSS says:

body { margin:0px; background-color:#fff ...

...so that (#fff, e.g., white) is the color that will show up before the other elements show up or the background graphic loads. Pick a color as close in tone and value to the main color of the final loaded version to minimize the apparent flicker. In your case, the majority of the resulting layout is the black-background box, so you want to go with black.

Answer 2

Another way of reducing flicker between page transitions in IE is the fajax technique described here.

It gives a short transition effect though regardless of the next page visited so might not be suitable but just thought I'd throw it in as a possibility.

<META http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="blendTrans(Duration=0.1)">
<META http-equiv="Page-Exit" content="blendTrans(Duration=0.1)">