Web browsers simply don't do this well. It breaks the whole non-persistent model. No matter what you do, you'll have to deal with network latency. Also, Browsers react differently when the user closes the browser window. I don't think that the onunload event is reliable for all the use cases.
Having a 15-second "autosave" is going to be your best fallback. I only hope that your management is going to be flexible on this. Unfortunately, what they want is outside the scope of what browsers can generally provide. - Brian > Not strictly speaking a jQuery question but I thought somebody on here > might have some insight into this. :) > > The Powers That Be have asked me for a system whereby the contents of > a form is automatically saved to the server whenever the user leaves > the page. I looked into onunload but from what I can asertain by the > time that event fires the form already no longer exists and can't be > submitted to the server. Doing an AJAX post whenever the form changes > isn't acceptible because that would generate too much database > traffic, so I'm kind of stuck. I did suggest preservign the data in a > cookie instead of the database but that is apparently not acceptable > either. > > Is there some other way I could have the form submitted when the user > leaves the page?
