Is there a faster way to give ":before" and ":after" selector support in IE7?

My design currently calls for a lot of :before and :after selectors. IE7 does not support these selectors so, after a little digging, I am开发者_Go百科 now using IE7.js (the IE8 version).

Whilst it does work, there is a noticeable lag (approx 15-20 seconds).

Can anyone recommend a faster alternative so that I can use the :before and :after psudo-element selectors in IE7?

I use this CSS hack in css:

.button {
 *zoom: expression( 
      this.runtimeStyle.zoom="1",
      this.insertBefore( document.createElement("div"), this.childNodes[0] ).className="before",
      this.appendChild( document.createElement("div") ).className="after"
     );

}

...and later simply:

.button:before, 
.button .before{
    ...
}

From the comments:

If you have zillions of :before and :after, the cause of the problem could be IE7's slowish JavaScript engine - if this is the case, I think you're out of luck - IE7.js is probably as efficient as you're going to get.

and:

@thirtydot I have a page with only one :before and :after and that is taking about 7-9 seconds, so I think you are right about it being the number of selectors I'm using.

IE7 :(