GWT - Celltable image flickering on Chrome - google-chrome

Question

We have a custom implementation of CellTable in which there is a custom column to render label and image. As part of hovering on a table row, we call table.redrawRow(rowNum) to render some context menu.
However, doing that, cause the text and image column to re-render the image (make a server call to fetch the image). This causes a flickering effect. This only happens in Chrome (version I am using - Chrome27)
The table row looks like this:
<tr __gwt_row="0" __gwt_subrow="0" class="GAH0TQLMKD">
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD GAH0TQLOKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-65" tabindex="0">
<div style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing:0">
<div style="display:table-cell;vertical-align:middle">
<img src="icon.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle; border: 0;width:16px;height:16px; ">
</div>
<div class="GAH0TQLMJD" style="display:table-cell"><b>Contiki</b></div>
</div>
</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-66">Travels</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-67">Blah</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-68">Blah</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-69">2013-07-10</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-70">5</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-71">07/10/2013 01:53 AM</div>
</td>
<td class="GAH0TQLKKD GAH0TQLNKD GAH0TQLILD GAH0TQLDAD" align="right">
<div style="outline-style:none;" __gwt_cell="cell-gwt-uid-72">
<div class="GAH0TQLFAD">
<div style="width:64px; height:17px"></div>
</div>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
I don't see flickering on Firefox or IE9.
Note: My Cache-Control headers are set to no-cache.
Any thoughts? Ideas?

Answer 1

If you ask the browser not to cache the image, and you ask it to draw the image, it'll re-download it.
So either change your caching strategy for the image, and/or your strategy for updating the table (using a redrawRow during a hover to display something new seems suboptimal; the cells should rather listen to the mouse events and update their DOM dynamically)