I have a couple of forms on the company SharePoint Portal site that take a few seconds to submit. In the back end, they link into our financial packages, and rely on the external application to do some of the processing. As a result, it can take 10 seconds to return the results page. My problem i
s “How do I display a “Processing, please wait message” to the page?

Simple.

1) Set up your message, and style it with css.

<style>
#processing{
    position:absolute;
    width:150px;
    height:100px;
    top:50%;
    margin-top:-50px;
    left:50%;
    margin-left:-75px;
    padding:10px;
    font-weight:700;
    background-color:blue;
    color:white;
    display:none;
    )
</style>

The important thing in the style definition is “display:none;”. This stops the div from displaying initially.

<div id="processing">
please wait...<br />
<blink>Processing</blink>
</div>

2) Add a bit of simple Javascript to the page

<script language="javascript">
function showstatus(){
    processing.style.display = 'block';
}
</script>

The javascript depends upon your div having an id of “processing”. If you want a different id for your div, please change the line “processing.style.display = ‘block';” accordingly.

nb. In SharePoint WebParts it is a little trickier to do. Add the div in a standard label, and the javascript can be output in the RenderWebPart method using output.Write(blah); It will probably work in the same label as the div, but I used the method above. easy to do, using the Page.RegisterClientScriptBlock() method.

3) Add an “onClick” handler to your button. The easiest way to do it is in the codeBehind.

buttonName.Attributes.Add("onClick","Javascript:showstatus()");

You can add that in your aspx file, if you are using one, but SharePoint WebParts don’t.

4) Build and deploy.

Easy when you know how.