If you are worried about interrupting a form, you could open the new form in a separate window (like most traditional VB apps would), then use client side scripting to trigger a refresh....

If you are going to depend on client-side scripting, which is often buggy, version-sensative, and inconsistent, then you might as well go with an applet-type approach. That would be better than JavaScript+DOM imo if it was not so bloated. JavaScript+DOM is a "medium client", not fat, but medium; plus it is a sloppy addon to the HTML model instead of built for GUI's up front.

Better to just byte the bullet and store the "state" or "UI image" on the server rather than the client IMO. It makes things conceptually far simpler.

PS. Have you ever looked at XUL from the Mozilla project?

I may have. It sounds familiar, but from a while ago. I have not been playing with SCGUI much lately.

B-to-B stuff just needs better, simpler HTTP-friendly GUI protocols. Nobody seems to want to directly solve this, living with kludgey hackey approaches instead and worrying about performance instead of programmer productivity, which is usually the more important thing for B-to-B. They assume everybody is ebay.

Thanx for the feedback, -T-