Thanks for all of the suggestions! It looks like the ugly stuff i had to do was necessary. The following works (on my machine, anyway) in IE and FireFox. I may make an article out of this for CodeProject.com later ;-)
This javascript goes in the <head> section:
<script type="text/javascript">
var tmout = null;
var mustReload = false;
function Resizing()
{
if (tmout != null)
{
clearTimeout(tmout);
}
tmout = setTimeout(RefreshAll,300);
}
function Reload()
{
document.location.href = document.location.href;
}
//IE fires the window's onresize event when the client area
//expands or contracts, which causes an infinite loop.
//the way around this is a hidden div set to 100% of
//height and width, with a guard around the resize event
//handler to see if the _window_ size really changed
var windowHeight;
var windowWidth;
window.onresize = null;
window.onresize = function()
{
var backdropDiv = document.getElementById("divBackdrop");
if (windowHeight != backdropDiv.offsetHeight ||
windowWidth != backdropDiv.offsetWidth)
{
//if screen is shrinking, must reload to get correct sizes
if (windowHeight != backdropDiv.offsetHeight ||
windowWidth != backdropDiv.offsetWidth)
{
mustReload = true;
}
else
{
mustReload = mustReload || false;
}
windowHeight = backdropDiv.offsetHeight;
windowWidth = backdropDiv.offsetWidth;
Resizing();
}
}
</script>
the <body> starts off like this:
<body onload="RefreshAll();">
<div id="divBackdrop"
style="width:100%; clear:both; height: 100%; margin: 0;
padding: 0; position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px;
visibility:hidden; z-index:0;">
</div>
the DIVs float left for the layout. I had to set the height and width to percentages just shy of the full amount (e.g., 99.99%, 59.99%, 39.99%) to keep the floats from wrapping, probably due to the borders on the DIVs.
Finally, after the content section, another javascript block to manage the refreshing:
var isWorking = false;
var currentEntity = <%=currentEntityId %>;
//try to detect a bad back-button usage;
//if the current entity id does not match the querystring
//parameter entityid=###
if (location.search != null && location.search.indexOf("&entityid=") > 0)
{
var urlId = location.search.substring(
location.search.indexOf("&entityid=")+10);
if (urlId.indexOf("&") > 0)
{
urlId = urlId.substring(0,urlId.indexOf("&"));
}
if (currentEntity != urlId)
{
mustReload = true;
}
}
//a friendly please wait... hidden div
var pleaseWaitDiv = document.getElementById("divPleaseWait");
//an example content div being refreshed via AJAX PRO
var contentDiv = document.getElementById("contentDiv");
//synchronous refresh of content
function RefreshAll()
{
if (isWorking) { return; } //no infinite recursion please!
isWorking = true;
pleaseWaitDiv.style.visibility = "visible";
if (mustReload)
{
Reload();
}
else
{
contentDiv.innerHTML = NAMESPACE.REFRESH_METHOD(
(currentEntity, contentDiv.offsetWidth,
contentDiv.offsetHeight).value;
}
pleaseWaitDiv.style.visibility = "hidden";
isWorking = false;
if (tmout != null)
{
clearTimeout(tmout);
}
}
var tmout2 = null;
var refreshInterval = 60000;
//periodic synchronous refresh of all content
function Refreshing()
{
RefreshAll();
if (tmout2 != null)
{
clearTimeout(tmout2);
tmout2 = setTimeout(Refreshing,refreshInterval);
}
}
//start periodic refresh of content
tmout2 = setTimeout(Refreshing,refreshInterval);
//clean up
window.onunload = function()
{
isWorking = true;
if (tmout != null)
{
clearTimeout(tmout);
tmout = null;
}
if (tmout2 != null)
{
clearTimeout(tmout2);
tmout2 = null;
}
ugly, but it works - which i guess it what really matters ;-)