In an earlier post I mentioned my struggle with the ProgressUpdate control. In many situations it would be helpful to place the progress indicator right in the middle of the page so users always have an idea something is happening. The problem with this is, well, Internet Explorer < 7 .0 which treats lists (dropdowns, list boxes) as windowed controls, so they always show on top of other HTML elements.

When Shane Shepherd posted a couple of links to workarounds, it all came full circle. I ended up writing an extender control which attaches to any ASP.NET control and centers it dead-center during an AJAX callback. The included sample uses an animated glyph lifted from here but you’re free to use whatever you want.

I had a chance to test this in IE 6, Firefox and Opera. I don’t have Safari at the moment. Download the source code here and simply open CenteredProgressIndicatorTest in Visual Studio as a web site.