Showing a <div> whilst a long running process is occuring

Hi, I'm using AJAX.NET to do a back end lookup and would like to
display a <div> constaining some text to the effect of "Please wait"
whilst it is running and then hide it once it is finished. At the
moment I set the style "display" property to "none" to hide the box and
then reset it to show it. This works, but becasue I'm doing the show ->
lookup -> hide in one javascript method, the tet never appears! What is
the best way round this? Cheers.

Kieran Benton wrote:

Hi, I'm using AJAX.NET to do a back end lookup and would like to
display a <div> constaining some text to the effect of "Please wait"
whilst it is running and then hide it once it is finished. At the
moment I set the style "display" property to "none" to hide the box and
then reset it to show it. This works, but becasue I'm doing the show -
lookup -> hide in one javascript method, the tet never appears! What is
the best way round this? Cheers.

I'm not familiar with AJAX.NET, but I would do the lookup
asynchronously and split the process into two functions:

show > lookup

receive/callback > hide


Add a way out and some added fault-tolerance-- any number of possible
occurrences may prevent the lookup from ever completing.