[Javascript] How to disable entire page when busy?

[Alexander Yap]

Hi all,

Does anyone know how to easily disable a page such that it doesn't accept 
user input (and preferably also grey out the page if possible)?

I have a page with many controls, all submitting to Java servlets. Some of 
the servlet processing can take a long time, and I do not want the user to 
submit anything else while the servlet is busy. I thought of putting this 
restriction on the server side, but that is not enough because my page also 
has lots of Javascript objects that maintain states on client-side.  If the 
user clicks on something, and the server ignores the request, the Javascript 
states will be out of synch with server-side session state.

Currently, I'm blocking user interaction by making visible a huge blank <div> 
block that covers the whole page when busy. The problem is that my users 
think that this suddenly appearing blank <div> is UGLY, because they're used 
to desktop apps that nicely grey-out the controls when disabled.

Individually controlling the controls' event handlers (using a global flag) 
is not practical because they are lots of them (some forms, some <div>s with 
onclick function, and there are also a few subframes). What I need is to be 
able to enable/disable user input at the window, document or body level.

I need to support IE5+ and Netscape 6.2, so I can't rely on Netscape's 
captureEvents() either. 

Any ideas??? Hope someone can help me here. I'm stuck.

Thanks in advance. 

-- 
Alexander Yap
Melbourne, Australia