Hello,
I've written an excel upload function that allows a user to upload an excel sheet through a web interface and it will commit it to a table. The problem is that with a table with many records, it takes some time to go through each record and check for changes, so it tends to hang. What would be the best solution for a progress bar type control that I could use to show the users that it is indeed processing the workbook?
Thanks.
Maybe a simple "I'm working" message would do, maybe even with an animated wait spinner.
If you have to do it that way, the Grails jQuery plugin works like it should, and jQuery does include a progress bar which is easy to update as long as you know how far along you are. Far easier though would be to use Bobby's recommendation of a wait gif.
If the process takes a long time, you may consider an asynchronous approach where you allow the user to upload one or more files and then provide them with a widget that shows them the status of all of their file uploads. This increases the responsiveness of the application and provides for a better user experience.
See how GMail does file attachments, or how Flickr does image uploads through the site for some examples.