108687 - Throbber starts when using document.writeln

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 81980

(Core :: DOM: Core & HTML, defect)

Description

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Go to URL.

Click on either left or right click me.

Note that throbber continues and there is an hourglass over middle frame.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

That would be because you never call document.close()....  we keep waiting for
more input.  This is correct behavior, imo.

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

In particular, try clicking left, then right.  The throbber behavior should make
more sense then...

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

So this is yet another "Works on IE, doesn't work on Mozilla"

Man that list is getting long.

Comment 4

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

OK, is there any way to add text to a frame rather than replace it.

The behvior that the person who gave this to me was expecting was that you 
could have a frame that did logging where you just keep document.writelning to 
it, and it shows a new entry.

With Mozilla, it does not appear possible to do that. If you document.close(), 
you lose the previous data.

Comment 5

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The way to add text is the following:

document.open()
document.writeln()
document.writeln()
.
.
document.writeln()
document.close()

If you don't call .open() then writeln() seems to do that for you.  Then while
the document is open one can keep appending data, but that also means that the
document is not done loading (obviously -- data is still coming in) so the
throbber is active.  Once you call close() the document is done loading so the
throbber goes inactive, but at this point open() will naturally wipe the
document clean (that's what open() does).

How does the IE behavior differ from ours?  Does it not animate the throbber at
all for writeln()?  Does it animate but stop it even though the document is not
closed (hence still loading)?

Comment 6

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

IE doesn't ever animate the throbber at all no matter what you are doing.

This means that with IE, you can put text in the middle from both the left and 
the right frame easily.

On Mozilla, you cannot because the throbber continues until you call 
document.close, and once you have called document.close, the next 
document.writeln will replace the content.

I've uploaded a better testcase that allows more control.

Comment 7

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

So the real "bug" here is that we start the throbber at all in these
circumstances, no?  Why is the throbber running a big problem in these
circumstances?

Note that IE's approach does not allow you to tell whether anything is happening
at all (eg if I add a slow-loading image via document.writeln() you may not
realize that you should wait for it because the throbber is inactive).

Not arguing for one behavior or the other, just suggesting things that should be
considered....

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Actually it does animate on IE if you put a slow image in because that creates a 
network connection.

I've added this to the testcase.

Comment 9

[timeless]

http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/jsref/doc1.htm#1011042

describes the throbber behavior among other stuff

Comment 10

[Johnny Stenback (:jst)]

I'm sure this is a dup of one of my bugs, but I can't find the bug...

Comment 11

[Fabian Guisset]

Dup of bug 81980 "doc.open()/doc.write() without doc.close() does not stop
throbber". Please reopen if you don't agree.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 81980 ***

Comment 12

[Amarendra Hanumanula]

verified that this is a dupe of bug # 81980