Showing a download message for streaming file

[robojam]

We're using SoftArtisans OfficeWriter to stream Excel files to users in ASP.NET. The problem is, some of these files are very large, so clicking on the download button seems to do nothing. What we'd like to do is to show something that lets the user know that the file is downloading.

 

The problem that we have is that we'd like to show the message once the button is clicked, and then remove the message when the save/open dialog box appears in the browser. As the initiation is server-side and the event that we're waiting on is client side, it's hard to know how to do this.

 

I was thinking of something along the lines of showing some kind of panel with an animated gif inside it to show that something is downloading at the point that the button is clicked. How do I determine that the browser is showing the save/open dialog box so that I can then hide the panel?

 

Thanks

[Gill Bates]

HTML does not have this capability built in. There are some components that do it but, in the end, they are hacks. Some of them are done very well though.

 

To answer your other question, I do not know of any way to hook the event for the save file dialog box in javascript (probably because it does not exist). I'm not totally sure though.