Add a TabPanel on a Nested Page from a Master Page

[joshjoneswas]

Hello All,

I have just discovered ASP.NET and, with the help of this board, have been making some great leaps in the last month or so with conceptualizing the framework. I come from a windows dev environment so the web makes me feel like a big dummy.

I am using VS2008, VB.NET, 3.5 Framework, ASP.NET, AjaxControlToolkit.

I have included a screen shot that might help to look at while you read my attempt to explain my issue below!

So please bare with me, but I just recently discovered in a book here on my desk how to interact with a master page programmatically from a nested master page or a regular aspx child page. The method they describe makes sense and is familar to me because they use Public Properties on the master page to manipulate the GUI and controls on the master page. But since they are public, the child pages can see them and fire them off. Makes sense.

I thought I could use this method to do the opposite of that and have the master page fire off something (say a public property in a nested page) to have it then do some work and update things on that nested page.

For example,

I have a MASTERPAGE.MASTER. Under that, I have a LEFTNAV.MASTER (so its a nested master page). Then, under that I have my default.aspx page.

(I did that so that for some of my regular aspx pages I could just tie them directly to the master page so that they dont have a left navigation page...like for big charts or graphs, etc. Is that the best way for that by the way?)

So on the masterpage, I have just a simple asp.net search textbox and an asp.net search button. When they type something in and click search, I want it to add a tab to the AJAXControlToolkit - TabPanel that I have on the default.aspx page, then some other things such as update a datagridview there with the search results.

I can do all of this except the event firing and scope. I cannot see a way to make a button on the master page up top fire off an event that is on the default.aspx page to make it do what it needs to do.

What I tried doing was creating a public property on my default.aspx page. I have some actual code in the SET to do some GUI manipulation and change some stuff on the page. But on my master page within the search button's click event, I cannot see where to call this public property on the default.aspx page...

Am I WAYYYYY wrong on this?

Thanks for any feedback.