[thelist] Persistent data without a server...

Lee Stewart LeeStewart at bigfoot.com
Tue May 29 23:15:38 CDT 2001


I have a project that has several HTML input screens in a wizard-like
interface, then the final page shows the results of some calculations.  I
was storing the form data locally in a cookie, but I ran into a couple
problems - it's slow (string parsing with Netscape) and there's a limit to
how much data can be stored.

My second attempt was to use a Java applet in a hidden frame and pass it the
data for storage.  Since the hidden frame is shared by all the pages, this
works well - until the user hits refresh, then my input page tries to access
the applet, but the applet isn't loaded.

My third attempt used the applet and checked if it was loaded into memory
before accessing it.  This is simple enough, but I'm not sure what to do if
it isn't loaded.  I tried using document.writeln() and making a refresh meta
tag.  This causes the refresh of the hidden frame and the applet gets
reloaded and I end up in a loop.

Right now I'm using alert() to tell the user that some calculation is being
done.  While this is up, the applet loads and everything is fine once the
user clicks OK.  It's annoying to have this pop up, though.  There's also a
chance that this won't work on all platforms.


Has anyone come across this situation?  Is there a simple solution?



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Lee Stewart               StripedCow Technology Group, Inc.
http://www.stripedcow.com          advanced web development






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