Eliminate page flicker in SharePoint
Happy with SharePoint
Sometimes I'm really happy with SharePoint and sometimes I'm not(read previous post). Today I'm happy again. In creating a connected webpart(read previous post) I noticed a very long and irritating page flicker. Normaly I don't really bother and to all those implementing a complete ajax solution just because of a little page flicker: Get a life! So how to solve this page flicker in SharePoint without adding an updatepanel?
IE only
To solve a problem we first need to set it's boundries. And in this case it is bounded to IE. Other browsers resolve the page flicker themselves. So we nee a solution for IE only. Hmm.. wait a second. I solved this issue many times before, without a single line of javascript. The page flicker has always annoyed me on websites that have a dark background color, such as Diveplace. I solved it by simply adding a page transition metatag into the header of my masterpage. This metatag looks like this: <meta http-equiv="Page-Exit" content="blendTrans(Duration=0.0)" />
Additional Page Head
The reason that I'm happy again is that I could create a new SharePoint feature really within minutes and the page flicker is resolved. All you need to do is create a usercontrol that contains this metatag and create a SharePoint feature that adds this UserControl to our AdditionalPageHead delegate control. Just like I showed you before.
So I solved one of the biggest SharePoint issues!!(if i may believe all the folks that implement AJAX on websites because of page flicker only)
Cheers and have fun,
Wes