i've a search form in which a user enters the keyword and the results are displayed with pagination. everything works fine except for the fact that when the user clicks on the 'Next' button, the pagination panel disappears as well when the page loads to retrieve the data through ajax.

how do i make the pagination panel static, while the data is being retrieved?

search.html:

  <form name="myform" class="wrapper">
      <input type="text" name="q" id="q" onkeyup="showPage();" class="txt_search"/>
      <input type="button" name="button" onclick="showPage();" class="button"/>
      <p> </p>
        <div id="txtHint"></div>

    </form>

ajax:

var url="search.php";
url += "?q="+str+"&page="+page+"&list=";
url += "&sid="+Math.random();
xmlHttp.onreadystatechange=stateChanged;
xmlHttp.open("GET",url,true);
xmlHttp.send(null);

function stateChanged(){
if (xmlHttp.readyState==4 || xmlHttp.readyState=="complete"){
document.getElementById("txtHint").innerHTML=xmlHttp.responseText;
} //end if
} //end function

search.php:

 $self = $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];
            $limit = 3; //Number of results per page
            $adjacents = 2;
            $numpages=ceil($totalrows/$limit);

            $query = $query." ORDER BY idQuotes LIMIT " . ($page-1)*$limit . ",$limit";
            $result = mysql_query($query, $conn)
             or die('Error:' .mysql_error());
?>

<div class="search_caption">Search Results</div>
<div class="search_div">
<table class="result">
    <?php while ($row= mysql_fetch_array($result, MYSQL_ASSOC)) {
        $cQuote =  highlightWords(htmlspecialchars($row['cQuotes']), $search_result);
        ?>
        <tr>
        . . .display results. . .
        </tr>
    <?php } ?>
</table>
</div>

<hr>
<div class="searchmain">
<?php
   //Create and print the Navigation bar
       $nav="";
       $next = $page+1;
       $prev = $page-1;
       if($page > 1) {
            $nav .= "<a onclick=\"showPage('','$prev'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $prev . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">< Prev</a>";

            $first = "<a onclick=\"showPage('','1'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=1&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\"> << </a>" ;
        }

        else {
            $nav .= "&nbsp;";
            $first = "&nbsp;";
        }

       for($i = 1 ; $i <= $numpages ; $i++) {
            if($i == $page) {
                $nav .= "<span class=\"no_link\">$i</span>";
            }else{
                $nav .= "<a onclick=\"showPage('',$i); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $i . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">$i</a>";
            }
        }

        if($page < $numpages) {
            $nav .= "<a onclick=\"showPage('','$next'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=" . $next . "&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\">Next ></a>";

            $last = "<a onclick=\"showPage('','$numpages'); return false;\" href=\"$self?page=$numpages&q=" .urlencode($search_result) . "\"> >> </a>";
        }

        else {

             $nav .= "&nbsp;";
             $last = "&nbsp;";
        }

        echo  $first . $nav . $last;
?>

</div>