According to jQuery Mobile documentation ( http://api.jquerymobile.com/page-loading/ ), "The page loading widget handles the task of displaying the loading dialog when jQuery Mobile pulls in content via Ajax". According to my debugger, that is true. However, the listview takes long enough to load after the AJAX is done that there's still a period of time with a blank screen.
Any suggestions for how to keep the default loading message going even after the Ajax request is done?
EDIT: After stepping through jquery.mobile-1.3.1.js, I see that the TransitionPages function hides the page loading message. It doesn't actually pertain to the AJAX specifically. Now I just need to find a way to get the listview to load before this TransitionPages function is called.
EDIT: Further information, the problem is that jQuery finishes the page transition before AJAX has returned data. Therefore the listview doesn't finish loading until after all the page transition events have fired and completed.