title: How to show startup progress in a web application?
body: <p>I'm sure almost everyone has worked on a project where the web application took more than 5 minutes to boot.  This means from a cold start, you could send a request from your browser and sit patiently watching a blank screen.  A few months back I installed a suite of Atlassian products (JIRA, Stash, Confluence).  These are large applications as well and can take a while to boot up; however, I loved what I saw in one of them.  The request returned almost immediately and instead of a blank screen, it provided a progress bar and showed what modules were currently being loaded.  I love this idea but am unsure of how they accomplished it.</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, has anyone seen this in an Atlassian product?  And if so, do you know how they accomplished it?</p>