Cursor shape change in IWP application?

[phochstr]

Hi

We implemented a IWP solution that, ah, needs to think from time to time. It'd be nice to change the cursor to a wait cursor (hourglass, wheel of fortune, ...), and back when we're done updating the data on screen.

Is there any way to do that under IWP?

[kirkrr]

Yes and no.

If you have a process that is taking a lot of time to run on the server, you get a spinning beachball.
If you have a process that is taking a lot of time to run on the client machine, you get a spinning hourglass.

NEITHER is a progress indicator of a correctly running process, like a find.

However, some browsers give you more to work with.....
IF you are running FireFox, you get a message in the bottom left of the FIrefox window indicating connecting/updating
If you are running Chrome, you get a clock-type icon on the bottom left, indicating connection/updating
If you are running Safari, you get a progress indicator in the URL on the top of the page.

If you are running IE, you get gornish / nada / nothing (and a problematic browser to boot).

One trick I use, is a global field placed prominently in the screen that the user is seeing, formatted to no line, no background.
When the process is complete, write a message into that field, like PROCESS UPDATE COMPLETE.
You can clear this field in a script trigger attached to the OnOpenLayout function, for housekeeping.

Globals are by user session, so this would only show for the user that is executing the request that is taking time.

However, if you have a good database design, the time to load almost anything, should be extremely quick. I just took a 1000 record database that was taking 2 minutes to load, changed a bunch of fields from calc to auto-enter calcs, and cut the load time to less than 3 seconds.