How to create a Wait Page?

[divya]

Hi,
I have a website that generates responses to a user's query. The
generation of a result takes a really long time (sometimes over two
minutes). I would like to create a "please wait while we are computing
the results page" like the ones I have come across in
www.travelocity.com and the like. The "wait" page is presented to the
user while results are being computed, after they click the "submit"
button in the query page. Once the results are available, the page
changes over to the result page. How does one go about doing this? I
am using Perl/CGI and a minimal amount of javascript.

I want to set up this "wait" page due to the long time that is
needed to generate results. Is there any other way to keep the user
interested and the webpage from expiring while my system is still
crunching the
numbers? I did try setting the "expires" tag in the HTML header but it
did not work. The browser gave up while the system was still working -
I tried on IE6.

I would really appreciate any comments/advice/directions that may
be provided.

Thanks!
Divya

 

[A. Sinan Unur]

Hi,
I have a website that generates responses to a user's query. The
generation of a result takes a really long time

Time for another classic by Randal Schwartz:

http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/col39.html

http://www.google.com/search?q=long+processes+cgi

Sinan