[jQuery] BlockUI: Odd behaviour in Internet Explorer

[jQuery] BlockUI: Odd behaviour in Internet Explorer


I have been attempting to build functionality into my AJAX app that
blocks the UI while the XML is loading. At first I thought I could do
this quite simply with a DIV over the top of the content, but as it
became increasingly aparent that IE 6 wouldn't work with this approach
I went with the blockUI plugin instead.
I got it working without too much difficulty but I noticed some odd
behaviour in IE. Once the interface has been restored the IE download
progress bar is still showing and the throbber (the spinning circle in
IE 7 and the Windows logo flag in IE 6) are still animating. They do
eventually time out and there doesn't seem to be any impact of the
actual workings of my app, but the progress bar and throbber might
mislead some users into thinking the page isn't ready to use when in
fact it is.
The problem seems to have something to do on completion of the AJAX
request. When I call unblockUI () on complete the progress bar
disappears and the throbber stops. The code for doing it was along
these lines:
$.ajax ({
    type        : 'GET',
    dataType    : 'xml',
    url            : 'foo' ,
    complete : function ()
    {
        $.unblockUI ();
    }
});
However I found the effect a little abrupt so I thought that instead I
could do a fade out and call unblockUI in the callback, something like
the following:
$.ajax ({
    type        : 'GET',
    dataType    : 'xml',
    url            : 'foo' ,
    complete : function ()
    {
        $('.blockUI').fadeOut ('slow', function (){$.unblockUI ()});
    }
});
The fadeout effect happens as desired but the progress bar and
throbber still show activity.
Does anyone know if this is normal or not? Is there a way of
achieving a fade out without causing the throbber problem in IE? For
the record the other test browsers did not seem to have this problem.
I know that on the whole it's a pretty minor problem but I do still
think it might cause confusion for people.