It's a long one, get comfortable.....
Background.... I have a
Struts 1.1 application, one view has 2
JSP's that do the following:
Parent JSP (hereafter JSP#1) has a nested iFrame on the top half of the screen that contains child JSP (hereafter JSP#2). JSP#2 does nothing but produce a result set of data in a scrollable <div>, which auto refreshes itself every 15 seconds using a Javascript setTimeout. The refresh submits to an action servlet that updates the forms result set Collection. Each record in the result set on child JSP#2 has an 'EDIT' link. JSP#1 contains all the edit controls, so when a user clicks the 'EDIT' link beside a record on nested JSP#2, we submit to an action servlet that reloads the page with the record's data loaded into the edit fields on parent JSP#1. The nested iFrame was required so when JSP#2 auto-refreshes, it would not interrupt users editing data in the bottom part of parent JSP#1.
Works like a charm (or at least as a webapp is expected to) in my opinion
... However my users do not agree.
My main Problem: When the nested JSP#2 refreshes, the content of the iFrame flickers -- which seems to be a REALLY big annoyance.
IE page refresh is noticeably worse than on FireFox/Navigator but "corporate" policy demands IE so changing browsers is out. This problem must be fixed -- they want a "flickerless" data refresh (keeping in mind the database is halfway across the country from the users).
What I have planned to attempt to please the masses: Changing the iFrame containing JSP#2 to a hidden form object so refreshes are in the background. Stripped all formatting and the 'EDIT' link. Cloned the scrollable <div> result set onto JSP#1 (including EDIT link), so the list and edit fields are no longer on different pages. I need to compare the hidden result set on JSP#2 after every refresh against the display result set on JSP#1, and if changes have occurred update the visible list (via Javascript, to avoid submitting the form and flicker). I have modified the nested iFrame to be hidden and added a visible result set to the parent JSP#1. That much is OK, auto-refreshes are not visible, but are working. However, I am at a loss as to how to clone the hidden auto-updating list to the visible one with javascript.
- The result set lists are defined as java.util.Collection
- Each element in these Collections are DynaActionForms
This is my form bean definition from my struts-cfg.xml
.. and here is how the result set is set up to loop through this Collection of DynaActionForms to produce the result set:
Can Javascript copy my full Collections over from child to parent? Is there a way for Javascript to handle struts objects (like that element DynaActionForm) and loop through them to copy property by property? This result list is seldom larger than 15 records, so even copying in the latter way would be acceptable.
After each auto-update, I need to be able to compare the Collection from the updated JSP#2 and visible JSP#1. If changes are detected, I need to be able to either update the changes, or the full Collection to the visible list using Javascript as submitting the task to a servlet is producing this flicker that has been deemed "unacceptable" :roll:
Any help or tips would be appreciated.
[ July 25, 2006: Message edited by: Jitwad ]
[ July 25, 2006: Message edited by: Jitwad ]
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