Select in Dialog causes slowness in IE8

Select in Dialog causes slowness in IE8

I have just run into a scenario where <select> elements in a jQuery UI dialog become slow to react or stop all together.  This problem appears to have been reported as #6644 ( http://bugs.jqueryui.com/ticket/6644).

Problem:

The setup is as follows:

1.  <div id="myDialog"> contains a <select> element

2.  jQuery.ready() initializes dialog on <div id="myDialog">

3.  A click event on an <a> triggers an AJAX call which retrieves data, populates the <select> and opens the dialog <div>

I have tested this scenario for list lengths of up to 600 items.  The dialog its self opens quickly but as the number of items in the list increases it takes longer and longer for the <select> element to drop down after a single click.  When the number of items in the list passes 300+ the <select> doesn't open and after several seconds IE8 warns that a script is taking too long to run and asks if the user would like to terminate the script.

Workaround:

I have found that this behavior can be completely eliminated by setting both draggable and resizable dialog properties to false.  Setting only one or the other of these to false may improve the situation but does not remove it entirely.

Questions:

1. Have others encountered this problem? 

2. Although I think it is OK in my particular scenario to disable dragging and resizing I can imagine a case where that might be a problem. Are there another other known workarounds?

3. I'm not familiar with the jQuery UI bug tracker. Bug #6644 linked above was apparently, as of today, last updated by Scott Gonzalez to say: "Core ticket:  http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/7341 (closed as wontfix)"  Does this mean that the problem described in #6644 is in fact due to #7341?  And more importantly, does this mean that #6644 is being treated as a non-bug and won't be fixed?

Thanks.