I had the same problem and I solved it by, in the action class when I had this "time consuming" 
action where I wanted to display a "please wait"-page

....
if(action.equals(messages.getMessage("button.justify"))){
   //Passing the action maping to request from the wait-form
   request.getSession().setAttribute("REDIRECT_ACTION_FORM",request.getContextPath()+mapping.findForward("/adk/justify").getPath());            
   return (mapping.findForward("wait"));
}

I put the "real-mapping" into a session attribute, - and request a "wait" action which is as follows:


    ">
    ">


    
Please wait....


This page displays a message, - and requests the "real"-action 

In the action: 
   "/adk/justify"

the REDIRECT_ACTION_FORM attribute is removed again...

This works fine....

Geir

So I have written a servlet, that is mapped to the *.do URL pattern, and the Struts Action servlet itself is mapped to *.dox.

Whenever the user clicks on a *.do-link, my servlet is executed, which replaces the "do" with a "dox" in the query string, puts it in the Http session and redirects to the wait JSP page. The JSP page gets the string from the session and uses Javascript (body onload="...") to load/execute the action.

There are some drawbacks of this solution: POST doesn't work, and the generated FORM tags in JSP pages have a dox suffix, so my servlet isn't executed.

Hope this helps,

Joachim