Tab menu with <dl> problem - IE issue

http://flairpair.com/dev/cards/

The problem is that when you mouse over the tabs, images are loading every time and there is a delay of couple of milliseconds which is really annoying .

Everything works good in FF. Anyone has a tip how to prevent this?

Here is the CSS code for the menu:

.menu {padding:0; margin:0; display: block; clear:both;}
.menu dd {float:left; padding:0; margin:0 1px 0 0; text-align:center;}
.menu dd span.aa {display:block; width:12px; height:20px; background:url(img/m_left.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:5px 0 1px 0;}
.menu dd span.bb {height:20px; background:url(img/m_bg.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:5px 0 1px 0;}
.menu dd span.cc {display:block; width:12px; height:20px; background:url(img/m_right.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:5px 0 1px 0;}

.menu a, .menu a:visited {color:#fff; text-decoration:none; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px; font-weight: 700; cursor:pointer;}
.menu a:hover {color:#fff; background:#fff; text-decoration:none;}
.menu a:hover span {border-bottom:1px solid #9689c1; text-decoration:none;}
.menu dd a:hover span.aa {display:block; width:12px; height:20px; background:url(img/m_left2.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:3px 0;}
.menu dd a:hover span.bb {height:20px; background:url(img/m_bg2.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:3px 0;}
.menu dd a:hover span.cc {display:block; width:12px; height:20px; background:url(img/m_right2.gif); float:left; border-bottom:0px solid #888; padding:3px 0;}

Code (markup):

 

That's just IE. It seems not to handle caching background images well at all. A common work-around is to use a single image instead of two or three. Simply shift it right and left or up and down for the :hover effect.
xxxyyy
&#160;⇐ ⇒

xxx ⇑
yyy ⇓

cheers,

gary

 

There must be some hack for IE to fix this ... Images are stupidly small, all 3 together are 700 bytes.

 

You sure it's not just a cacheing problem which is causing it to re-load the image each time?

 

That's exactly what it is, see my response, above. There is no fix, only a work-around. By not using different images, and only shifting the one image back and forth, the cache problem is avoided.

cheers,

gary