Getting an Animated Image to Work

[kblagron]

I thought I was doing something pretty simple, making a popup with an animated image of an hour glass that spins while some field read and writes occur, but just can't get it to animate. I did it three ways:

(1) I used a static animated image, put it in a popup, and then executed the 10-15 commands in [onload] and end it with an exit. It does pop up and exit as wanted, but I can't get it to spin (or be animated).

(2) If I take that same image, delete all of the code in [onload] and execute it by itself, it will spin.

(3) If I put it in a popup, put a settimeout command in the onload, it will spin.

Why won't it spin in option (1).

[Dean Roddey]

Because the timers that drive the updates can't run while those commands are happening. They can't be started until the popup is fully up and running, since initialization is still going on, and those timers could cause things to happen simultaneously, which would be bad.

In theory the things that were allowed during such a situation could be artificially limited, but that would require yet another significant bit of work to insure that. So I'd have to look at what would be the smartest way to deal with that. Probably there wouldn't be a smart way, just a tedious (and easily broken) way.