Is it just me that’s been getting a lot more of this recently?

It’s not just on slow connections, or even on fast connections when there’s a lot of activity going on. It’s even happening to me on connections where everything is fast, and from a variety of computers (so I doubt it’s a cache problem).

And the Basic HTML view is fast, but missing too many features to be practical most of the time.

Is it Gmail getting too many users per server?

Or is it feature-creep getting into the Javascript? I can think of a few things I’d dearly love to “uninstall” from my personal Gmail experience if I could. I never use the Chat. I turned off the Web Clips. I know the adverts pay for it, so I guess I’ll put up with them. I have turned contacts’ pictures. Perhaps the recent upgrades to speed up the response on the interface is to blame?

I don’t know what it is, but Gmail, especially the initial load, is definitely slowing down for me.

• A bunch of tips of varying usefulness
• This worked: bookmark and use the “old version” link… but how long until the new, slow version becomes the “old version”?

PS. heh. After I ranted, I tried clearing the browser cache. After that it loads up like a dream, very fast. I’ll try it on the other affected machines’ Firefoxen. Maybe some combination of Ajaxy library version clashes did something funny.