Mid-function display update

[lisak]

Hi, I am looking for a piece of shared wisdom: at the moment, I am working on DictioLaunch dictionary program originaly put together by Clemenseken (javascript autorun.* application).

As the dictionary search times can be up to several seconds, I'd like to show the "hourglass" icon when the search is in progress. Unfortunately it seems that the screen is actualy updated only when reader is "idle", i.e. not in the middle of some javascript function.

Is there some solution to that? Either by means of some force-redraw of the screen (here I'm missing the knowledge of "right" functions that do that), or by employing some callback function (hopefuly, the screen would be updated before the callback is actualy executed).

Second option seems to be more viable to me, as I could find examples of callbacks in main.js program (either via Timer class, or by this.setVariable / variableChanged function pair) - unfortunately, neither is working for me.

Does anybody have some proved example with callbacks that actualy works and is willing to share it? Or do you have some other idea how to resolve this problem?

Many thanks!