Is steamgifts /trades really slow for anybody else?

Mine too and Steam.

It was, yeah. But it's better now.
EDIT: Now that you posted a body of text... Chrome is probably half your problem right there. Go with Opera. ;)

It is getting a lot more traffic because of recent sales.

Exactly the same as you OP.

Edit: Within a minute of typing that it seems to have sped up for the first time today.

Tell me about it.. i'm dying here

Yep. Its takes a bit longer than it usually does to connect, and for steam, it would be because of the summer sale.

Yes. It's steam's fault. Same is happening with many other steam related sites.

Oh, I thought it was just me, I guess not :)

Yes. It's been slow here too.

Steam is holding up a lot of our connections with their slow performance at the moment. I just tweaked up our server a few minutes ago, let me know if it's running any smoother.

it has been slow, its got better though :)

it is always slow for me

Steamgifts has always been slow for me.