342 Part II: Developing an Ajax Library^
The screen position of the various activity indicators varies. Some applications will place
the indication in the area where any retrieved content may be placed. Others may provide
all status messages in a set position on the page such as the upper right corner. There are
certainly arguments for putting status messages directly in a user’s view, just as there are
arguments for not annoying them by doing so. Using both methods may be reasonable as
well. In fact, there is no reason you cannot use multiple activity indicators at once, especially
when you consider that is what the browser does for showing communication activity
traditionally. An example found at http://ajaxref.com/ch8/progressindicator.html can be
used to explore the various progress indication techniques discussed in this section. A
preview of this application can be seen in Figure 8-3.Detailed Status Indications
The techniques of the last section provide scant detail about what is going on
communication-wise; they show simply that a request has been made and is in progress.
For the majority of short-lived successful Ajax requests, this is likely quite reasonable, but
what about for longer requests?
Ajax currently lacks a standard approach for providing detailed status information, but
there might be some things developers can do to provide at least some indication of requestFIGURE 8-3 Exploring the various Ajax progress indications