Does anyone know if there is a way to minimize the visual impact of a screen refresh after a postback in ASP.NET?

Sometimes after an event (e.g. button click), the whole page seems to clear then re-draw itself. Although the page is always re-created after a postback, sometimes this is not very noticeable at all, but on other pages it is extremely noticable. I have the viewstate turned on on all controls and am checking for Page.IsPostBack in page load. Any ideas?

...I've found the answer! Switch "smartNavigation" on

You can turn on the "SmartNavigation" attribute of a page. This does several things:

A) Uses client-side code to do a "background" request of the page which reduces the "flicker" affect of the page refresh.
B) Automatically scrolls the page to the point where you were at so if your page is any longer than one screen, you don't get sent back to the top.
C) Sets the focus back to the control you were on when the postback occurred.

All together, the SmartNavigation affectively eliminates the visual impact. However, it does have one side effect. If the page takes a long time to process, the browser will appear as if it is not doing anything after you cause a postback event. Then suddenly the page will refresh. It can be a little confusing. The other side-affect is that if you go to look at the source code of the page, you won't see the actual source HTML, but usually just the first page hit's source HTML. This is due to the way the smart navigation happens. It uses some javascript and seems to actually make the request in a hidden <iframe>. Fortunately, this isn't really a problem for the users, just the developers.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder

Thanks Peter

If I use <META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5;"> in the head section, the refresh occurs every 5 seconds but screen flickers a lot. I added Smartnavigation = "true", for the page and the refresh doesn't happen any more. do, I need to set anything else.

Thanks
Renu

Also, if I click refresh on the screen in the toolbar, it takes me to the login screen. In that case, i have to log back in. Why clicking refresh on the screen doesn't stay on the same page?