It's been brought to my attention, and I've noticed it now too, that AJAX stuff in BVC5 can sometimes take as long as 10 seconds to load on certain connections. Product modifiers, for instance. Even 3 seconds without notice that something is going on is too much.

I've also noticed that if I'm rapid-typing my way through checkout using the tab key, selecting the State causes a delay before I can type in the Zip Code box while Anthem does whatever it's doing. It doesn't let me know that it's doing something, so I keep typing until I notice that nothing is being entered.

Is there a way to tell Anthem to show a loading image or text during load, then hide on complete?

Cliff,


There sure is. Let's look at One Page Checkout\Checkout.aspx for example. The state DropDownList looks like this:



All of the Anthem controls that can make a callback have a property called TextDuringCallBack. As you can see in the source, TextDuringCallBack="Please wait...", but as you also noticed, this text does not seem to appear anywhere. The reason is that the DropDownList control does not have any natural text to set during the callback. For example, if this had been a Button, then the text of the button would change to "Please wait..." during the callback.



When Anthem can not find a natural text value to change it looks for an associated <label> control instead. So one fix in this case is to associate a real <label> with the DropDownList. For example change,




to this




After making this change the state label "State, Zip:" will change to "Please wait..." during the callback. Note that you can put the associated label anywhere on the page, it does not need to be the actual label.



As you know Gmail does something a little different. Every time you do something in gmail that causes a callback, gmail will display "Please wait..." (or something similar) in a colored box at a fixed location of the viewport (top right I think). You can do something similar with Anthem controls using pre- and post- callback functions. For example put this <div> on your page:




Then define these two js functions:



Now there are two ways to invoke these functions. If you want specific controls to use them, use PreCallBackFunction and PostCallBackFunction like this:



If you want all callbacks to use them, add this to your page:




These Before and After functions are a little simple minded. If you make multiple callbacks (e.g. change the country and the zip very quickly), then the first After will hide the <div> even though the slower callback is still running. A more intelligent Before/After would use some kind of counter and maybe a timer to keep track. You can disable most controls during callback so you don't get two clicks. For example,




And you can combine EnabledDuringCallBack with TextDuringCallBack:



And finally, ImageButton has a similar property called ImageDuringCallBack. I'm sure you can guess how it works.

No doubt, thanks Andy!

I found the Anthem site and the function Anthem_PreCallBack() thing while I was waiting for the moderation on my post, so I did this last night:

I'm using Prototype and Script.aculo.us for some product image lightboxing on the product page, so that's what the js is. It seems to work pretty well, but I see what you're talking about in the simple-mindedness of it. I wasn't having much luck with the TextDuringCallBack and EnabledDuringCallBack, but I was probably using it in the wrong place, so I'll give it another shot.

Thanks again, I'm getting some cool results from this.

I don't know how it acts on a slow connection, but depending on what type of broadband they have it doesn't matter. My satellite broadband is lightning fast but takes forever with the ajax stuff...not just with the Anthem but on other stores on other platforms as well...something to do with latency....loads the pages and graphics really fast but doesn't do well with those callbacks or with SSL for that matter...so combine the two ala the checkout page and it's REALLY slow for me

John, isn't satellite 1 way? Your download is fast but you have to use the phone line for upload? I don't know of any satellite service offering bi-directional service. So if this is the case there is no wonder postbacks are slow.

Most of the satellite services I've seen lately are 2-way, though upload speeds are quite a bit slower than other forms of broadband.

I, too, have noticed on my cable connection that AJAX calls can take much longer than loading pages. Not sure why...