The 'A' in AJAX

[tfarrell]

Backstory:
I'm evaluating Smartclient as my next library of choice. I currently use YUI, but I feel like I've stretched and customized it beyond my supportable comfort zone. So I'm looking for something better. As with many who have gone before me, this is a ExtJS vs. SmartClient thing.

Current issue:
I was looking at the demos (Printing demo specifically). It hangs on loading and eventually gives the following error:

Transport error - HTTP code: 502 for URL:
http://www.smartclient.com/isomorphic/IDACall

My question is: Regardless of what error the server gives and why, is the delay a page loading issue or do most/all XHR dataSource fetching requests block the UI? Is that what's going on here?

The underlying question is: When my server takes a smoke break, is it easy to program in a friendly "Hang on a second" message so my users don't come hunting me down saying, "my computer froze!!"?

Thanks for your help.

[Isomorphic]

Hi tfarrel,

Yes you can trap these kinds of errors and cleanly recover - the two key APIs involved are RPCManager.handleTransportError() and RPCManager.resendTransaction(). We do plan to create an example of this in the future, where a screen comes up during simulated server failure until the server comes back up.

PS that problem is now fixed at SmartClient.com