Slow jquery dialog open

Slow jquery dialog open

I noticed that jquery-ui is very slow when opening a dialog with some 50 or so links on it.
I profiled it using IE 9 profiler, and found that most of the time is spent in the following part of the open function:

        // set focus to the first tabbable element in the content area or the first button
        // if there are no tabbable elements, set focus on the dialog itself
        $(self.element.find(':tabbable').get().concat(
            uiDialog.find('.ui-dialog-buttonpane :tabbable').get().concat(
                uiDialog.get()))).eq(0).focus();

It takes about 15s to open the dialog. If I remove that code from the open function, then the time goes down to around 200ms. Both times as reported by the profiler.

I am using jquery-ui-1.8.10 and jquery 1.4.4. Problem is observable in IE6, IE8 and IE9.

I think I can survive with the dialog not focusing correctly, but would like to know if there is something that can be done to improve this problem.

-Nelson