Question

I have a web page with a timer control ,1 update panel ,few drop downs etc.
Many of the drop down on selected index changed need to display more than 1 additional controls or hide some controls.The issue is it takes a lot of time in a way that user dont realize that it is yet to complete the event click.Please suggest some ideas.

Answer 1

If it’s taking a long time, I assume that you’re using a server-side event handler for when your dropdown selection changes. When a server-side event fires, what that means is that your form is posted back to the server, the server re-renders the form and sends it back to the client, and then the client replaces the contents of the update panel. Thus, the user is subject to multiple factors that can cause slowness.

If you have the option, you could rework the page so that the event handling is done client-side. You would have to write some JavaScript code and make sure that the necessary data for updating the page is available to your JavaScript. If you cannot expose all of the data necessary for updating purely client-side, you could do an Ajax call to get just the data you need; that should be more lightweight than a full partial postback.

All of this is a lot of work, but should make your page faster. Of course, maybe you don’t really need to solve the page’s speed but provide better feedback to let the user know that the page is updating. For example, if you have a “Loading…” indicator while the partial postback is going on, then the user will know to wait.