AJAX actions in edit mode: too slow to display on the browser side- how to optimize performance?

I have the feeling that, from the introduction of the new worfklow states + new work-in progress, the edit mode is displayed slower (especially on IE 6.0 where such workflow states can rapidly take 1-2 sec to be displayed - and it only takes ~100ms to be calculated on the server side).

So I installed Firebug (even if it is on FF which lookw like already displaying such edit mode pages faster than IE6) and the workflow states display can rapidly take between 500ms and 1s (cf screenshot).

Could we improve such a "browser-side" performance? Could we for example mention the size of the image (the small dots icon)? Or is there any other trick in order to boost performance in order to display such icons and position them correctly on the page?

[ I have 20 pages (with some Nstep and some std workflows) in my topbar... so 20 dots to display... so customers could have certainly lots more dots being displayed especially with large left menu... It would be interesting to test such browser performance on the left menu of the 10'000 pages test site]