Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress 4GL Handbook

Hiding screen contents when making changes

Various types of operations make a series of changes to the user interface of an application before the user interface arrives at a final state. This might involve calculating a succession of values that are visible on the screen or adjusting the state of objects, such as combo boxes and selection lists. If you set the objects’ (or where appropriate the frame’s) HIDDEN attribute to true while you are making the adjustments, not only will you avoid flashing on the screen as things are changing, but the changes generally execute faster because the screen does not have to refresh after each adjustment.

Remember that the browse has a special REFRESHABLE attribute that you can set to false while you are making changes to the data displayed in the browse, to also prevent flashing for that object. This avoids having the browse hidden during the calculations, which might be distracting, but effectively freezes it so that the user sees only the final result of the changes.