title: Set the cursor in JavaScript for a long synchronous operation
body: <p>I am trying to set a global page cursor (using <code>cursor: wait !important;</code> on <code>document.body</code>) at the beginning of a long-running <em>synchronous</em> XmlHttpRequest (synchronous sucks I know but let's not worry about that right now), however the browser (testing in Chrome) doesn't update the cursor until control is returned from the script, which doesn't happen until the end of the long-running operation.</p>
  
  <p>It works great for asynchronous XmlHttpRequests (and therefore migrating the synchronous ones to be asynchronous is obviously one solution).</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to get the browser to refresh the cursor without breaking out of the current synchronous operation?</p>