title: Optimizing jQuery UI drag and drop schedule grid
body: <p>I have a schedule grid based on a HTML table using jQuery/jQuery UI drag and drop. Each cell in the table represents a user and timeslot. I've got good performance in IE9, FireFox, and Chrome however IE8 is unusable because there is a several second pause between the time a user starts a drag and the time the drag helper appears.</p>
  
  <p>I know part of the problem is that I am creating a large number of droppables, in this case:</p>
  
  <p>112 Users on a 24 hour grid (total of 2688 droppables created)</p>
  
  <p>If I remove the code that makes the empty 2688 cells dropable the speed increases significantly, but animation still feels sluggish in IE8.</p>
  
  <p>What are some suggestions for speeding this up? I've considered making the table itself the droppable, but I'm not sure how I would calculate which cell was being dropped onto, and I would lose the hoverState CSS background that indicates the active cell.</p>
  
  <p>One key requirement is that I stick with the HTML table because of how it is data bound on the server.</p>
  
  <p>Am I fighting a losing battle against IE8? I'd really like to make this as fast as possible in that browser.</p>