The cleanest solution I've seen to this problem is the following:

• Create two divs on your page. One contains a GIF-89 that has some neat status indicator that repeats. The second contains your data and starts out as display: none;
• Immediately render the first div and the beginning of the second div. This way, your user sees something.
• As you get results, render them right away so as to keep the connection alive.
• After you finish rendering, hide the first and show the second div.

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