Loading Icon - Upgrade thoughts

During my development I was always troubled that the loading icon plug-in worked fine with before page submit events but never worked when you redirected the page immediately. For example if you used code like this:

<a href="f?p=&APP_ID.:3:&SESSION.::NO::P2_EXAMPLE_ID:#EXAMPLE_ID#">
<img alt="" src="/i/menu/pencil16x16.gif">
</a>

No loading icon would appear. As a manual solution use this code example:

/* Template: */
<img
  src="#IMAGE_PREFIX#magnifying_glass_white_bg.gif" 
  alt="" 
  title="Show sample data"
  style="cursor:pointer;"
  onclick="
   fnc_startLoadIcon('...loading...','/i/my_loading_icon.gif',32,32,8,'#F26300',6);
   window.location='f?p=&APP_ID.:1:&SESSION.::::P2_EXAMPLE_ID:#EXAMPLE_ID#';
   return false;">

I'm thinking to integrate this as an option to the Loading Icon plug-in. I would capture the href element take the href source and transform it so that the loading icon would appear before the page reloads.