I just discovered the UpdateProgress Control for ASP.NET AJAX. This is the drag & drop method for getting those nice little animated "wait" gifs to show up just at the right time while you are waiting for AJAX to refresh it's target on the page.

All you need is an animated GIF. Scott Guthrie points to a few resources for some groovy animations on the web in this post about the UpdateProgress control that he wrote over a year ago. Yep, that's how long it took me to clue in!

(Source of this animated gif: www.napyfab.com)

You can associate an UpdateProgress control with an UpdatePanel which will cause ASP.NET AJAX to figure out when to display and then hide the contents of the control or you can programatically control the actions. This AJAX Quickstart walks through how to use the ProgressControl. It's minimal investment with maximum payoff!