Newbie Ajax+Rails questions

Hi everybody!

I'm working on a small Rails app which lets the user enter a small script & submit it. This app then launches a third party executable to parse that script, and finally shows the result.

The execution time from the third party app can be somewhat long, and I'd like to show a spinner meanwhile.

I used 3 different actions (index / execute / result) in the same controller. Thanks to a form_remote_tag, 'execute' action is called from index, while displaying a spinner.gif. But I'd like my app to redirect to 'result' action when 'execute' is finished. Is that possible?

I tried with

def execute   ....   ....   redirect_to :action=>'result' end

but my browser stays on index page, and doesn't display anything from 'result' action.

I also tried to use render :update inside 'result' action, in order to update index page. It works, but a browser refresh with F5 destroys results and show an empty index page.

Is something wrong in my structure? Is it possible to show a spinner without using AJAX?

Thanks a lot,

Eric

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!