Waiting page while loading

Hi everybody!
Could you please tell me if there is a way to do a waiting page while the real one is loaded at all?
You know, when you press a submit button, the message "waiting...." appears while the form is processed and then the second page appear completely.. I mean, something that let the waiting message until the page is completely loaded.
Help me please,
Any clue will be great!
Thanks in advance,
Nancy.

okay....here is an idea,,,,i used a button instead of a submit, all you need to do is add the on_click statement to you submit button. Pops up a layer on the page and says it is processing.
This is just a quick idea....see if it works and remember to change on_click to one word by removing the _.
<html>
<head>
<title>Ad</title>
</head>
<body>
<script>
function Advert(){
var wlayer="LoadingAlert";
var how="visible";
if (document.getElementById) {
document.getElementById(wlayer).style.visibility = how;
}
else if (document.all) {
document.all[wlayer].style.visibility = how;
}
else if (document.layers) {
document.layers[wlayer].visibility = how;
}
}
</script>
<div id="LoadingAlert" style="position:absolute;top:200;left:300;visibility:hidden;">
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#006F93" bgcolor="#C0C0C0">
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><b><font size="5">Please Wait while the form is processing.<br>
It will take a short moment of your time.<br>
Thank You!</font></b></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<form>
<input type="button" on_click="Advert()" value="show it">
</form>
</body>
</html>

Thank you Al for your reply,
But, unfortunatly, it only works on IE and I need a solution that works either in IE or Netscape.
And it would be great if the first page dissapear (clear) while the message is shown.
Could you please help me?
Or dou you know where I could find clues to help me?
Thanks in advance

change the div to something like this
<div id="LoadingAlert" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;visibility:hidden;width:100%;height:100%">
<table border='1' bordercolor="#006F93" bgcolor="000000" bgcolor="#C0C0C0" width="100%" height="100%">
<tr><td align="center" valign="middle">
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#006F93" bgcolor="#C0C0C0">
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><b><font size="5">Please Wait while the form is processing.<br>
It will take a short moment of your time.<br>
Thank You!</font></b></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td></tr>
</table>
</div>
you may be able to try the following to submit the form....might help with netscape...
<input type="button" on_click="Advert();formname.submit();" value="Submit Form">

Thanks againg Ian, but it still doesn't work in Netscape.

If you are using CGI or Servlets to generate your content then try something like the following in pseudocode:

This solution uses client-pull to periodically check if the content is ready on the server. It is easier with Servlets where the HttpSession object can be used to track if the content is available yet.
HTH, Neil

[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: Neil Laurance ]

Hi Nancy,
the example I have was done using servlets but essentially any server side scripting process could produce it.
The process is done is 3 steps:
1) a page with the form parameters submits to an intermediate page
2) the intermediate page displays a message "please wait" and preforms a JavaScript location.replace to submit the parameters to the page which does the actual work.
3) the "work" page returns a result after a while
The key part is step 2 which only has the responsibility of displaying a message and forwarding the parameters on to the page the does the real work.
Anyway here is the code (listed in 3 servlets), you should be able to see what's going on.
Servlet1 (step1)

package jswan.mediaserver;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
/**
 * Test Servlet1
 */
public class Servlet1 extends HttpServlet {
    public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();
        
        res.setHeader("Expires","Wed, 07 Aug 1974 1:00:00 GMT");
        res.setContentType("text/html");
        
        out.println("<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\">\n");
        out.println("<html>");
        
        out.println("<head>");
        out.println("  <title>Servlet1</title>"); 
        out.println("</head>");
      
        out.println("<body>");
        out.println("  <h1>Submit long running query</h1>");
        out.println("  <form name=\"form1\" method=\"get\" action=\"jswan.mediaserver.Servlet2\">");
        out.println("    <input type=\"text\" name=\"input1\"><br>");
        out.println("    <input type=\"text\" name=\"input2\"><br>");
        out.println("    <input type=\"text\" name=\"input3\"><br>");
        out.println("    <input type=\"submit\">");
        out.println("  </form>");
      out.println("</body>");
      
    out.println("</html>");
    }
    public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        doPost(req,res);
    }
}

Servlet2 (step 2)

package jswan.mediaserver;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
/**
 * Test Servlet2
 */
public class Servlet2 extends HttpServlet {
    public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();
        
        res.setHeader("Expires","Wed, 07 Aug 1974 1:00:00 GMT");
        res.setContentType("text/html");
        
        out.println("<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\">\n");
        out.println("<html>");
        
        out.println("<head>");
        out.println("  <title>Servlet2</title>");
        out.println("</head>");
      
        out.println("<body>");
        out.println("  <h1>running, please wait...</h1>");
        out.println("  <script language=\"JavaScript\">");
    out.println("  ");
        out.println("  </script>");
      out.println("</body>");
      
    out.println("</html>"); 
    }
    public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        doPost(req,res);
    }
}

Servlet3 (step3)

package jswan.mediaserver;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
/**
 * Test Servlet3
 */
public class Servlet3 extends HttpServlet {
    public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();

res.setHeader("Expires","Wed, 07 Aug 1974 1:00:00 GMT");
        res.setContentType("text/html");
        
        try {
Thread.sleep(10000);
} catch (Exception e) {
out.println(e);
}
        
        out.println("<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\">\n");
        out.println("<html>");
        
        out.println("<head>");
        out.println("  <title>Servlet3</title>");
        out.println("</head>"); 
        out.println("<body>");
        out.println("  <h1>query results</h1>");
        out.println("  <h4>input1=" + req.getParameter("input1") + "</h4>");
        out.println("  <h4>input2=" + req.getParameter("input2") + "</h4>");
        out.println("  <h4>input3=" + req.getParameter("input3") + "</h4>");
      out.println("</body>");
      
    out.println("</html>"); 
    }
    public void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws ServletException, IOException {
        doPost(req,res);
    }
}

Hopefully you get the idea, and yes this is browser independent.
James.
[ September 26, 2002: Message edited by: James Swan ]