Mouse pointer change to hour glass

cretam

Hi,
I want to show that the page is loading and it doesn't look like it's frozen when a user selects a selection from my drop down menu.. I thought the best way would be to make the mouse pointer change to an hour glass while it is getting the data and back to a pointer when it displays the information from the db.
Is this the best way to do it?

Thank you in advance.

mcdsoftware

The best way to do this would be JavaScript. I don't know the actual code, but I can tell you now that this isn't accomplished via PHP.

Weedpacket

There's a CSS style attribute that can be used (though its name and setting escapes me for the instant); have Javascript change the style at the start of what it's doing and change it back at the end.

dougal85

Weedpacket wrote:
There's a CSS style attribute that can be used (though its name and setting escapes me for the instant); have Javascript change the style at the start of what it's doing and change it back at the end.

I don't think you can have an animated hourglass.

CSS;

body{
cursor: wait;
}

JavaScript

document.body.style.cursor = "wait";

ManWithNoName

If I'm not mistaken you can have custom cursors, perhaps CSS supports the use of one that is animated? (http://www.w3schools.com/css/pr_class_cursor.asp)

Weedpacket

dougal85 wrote:
I don't think you can have an animated hourglass.

a) You were the first to say anything about animation; and b) it depends on what cursor set you have installed on your desktop.

My preference would be to have a throbber graphic of some sort somewhere in the page near the bit that's being updated, and switch its visibility on and off as appropriate.