merlyn's column referred to above alludes to another technique: server push. This allows the server to send updates to the client browser any time it wants. With this technique you can even update images, to give the user an animated "experience" while waiting. A quick google search yielded a nice example at Netscape. And some perl code at this site.

This approach seems to be fairly common today and is easy to do in perl. Lack of browser support is far less common today than it was in 1977...

--traveler

In reply to Re: Generating a 'please wait' message by traveler
in thread Generating a 'please wait' message by nysus

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