title: Fastest way to append HTML content to a div using JavaScript
body: <p>I have an HTML page that uses AJAX to retrieve messages from a server. I'm appending these messages to a  as they are retrieved by setting its <strong>innerHTML</strong> property.</p>
  
  <p>This works fine while the amount of text is small, but as it grows it causes Firefox to use all available CPU and the messages slow down to a crawl. I can't use a textbox, because I want some of the text to be highlighted in colour or using other HTML formatting. Is there any faster way to do this that wouldn't cause the browser to lock up?</p>
  
  <p>I've tried using jQuery as well, but from what I've read setting .innerHTML is faster than its .html() function and that seems to be the case in my own experience, too.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> Perceived performance is not an issue - messages are already being written as they are returned (using Comet). The issue is that the browser starts locking up. The amount of content isn't that huge - 400-500 lines seems to do it. There are no divs within that div. The entire thing is inside a table, but hopefully that shouldn't matter.</p>