I notice a lot of flickering going on with the toolbar icons, so I played around a bit and it looks like each one is pulling the URL from the DB with each mouse over and the icon is being redrawn? Is this the nature of the beast and no way to prevent so many db hits and wasted bandwidth with the icon toolbar?

...seems to know the static URLs with the text toolbar, so not sure how to explain what I am seeing. ;)

Yea, I tried disabling the script and had the same result...with each mouseover, my favicon flashes with the round IE circle spinning as if it is accessing the internet for a split second, and the URL for each respective icon displays for a second in the status bar, then turns to 'done,' which is why I assumed a db call...strange. Nonetheless, even with the script disabled, each toolbar icon still flashes until you leave the mouse over the icon for a second or two and then it becomes static; until then, the whole row will appear and disappear with each mouseover.

No one else is seeing this even with the script off?

I checked my firewall and it is definitely hitting the Internet with each onmouseover. If you switch to the text toolbar and look in the status window, the URL stays displayed when you mouseover; if you check the status window when you onmouseover the icons, it flashes the URL (after what appears to be a db call for the URL on my site) and then displays "done."

This clears up after you have 'rubbed' all icons long enough for them to stay static...about 2-3 seconds per on my slow Germany connection while abroad as I slave off the neighbors. ;)