I really like what you are doing with these CSS adapters and will immediately make use of then especially the menus. It looks you have adopted a lot of the good CSS ideas that have floating around such as http://alistapart.com/articles/dropdowns that combined with a wonderful script at http://www.xs4all.nl/~peterned/csshover.html. (solving some nasty IE issues) produces great menus. Yours seem to be in same league however I do not see an easy way to fire client-side events. I am in the business of delivering "rich-client" experiences which of course means minimizing PostBacks. Ok, I know that Atlas can help but I still feel that you need to provide client-side support for a complete solution as not all of us are "javascript challenged". This function is standard with controls from vendors like Telerik.

PS. where do I get my hands on this great HTML edit control??

(I'm guessing that the HTML edit control is part of Community Server (which powers these forums) but I really don't know.  Ha ha.  There are several edit controls like this out there on the web that you can consider using.)

Regarding the issue of supporting JavaScript client-side processing better.  I'm more than happy to engage in a discussion of this with you and to add appropriate and safe "hooks" into the adapter kit to make it easier for folks like you to get your job done... whilst using the adapters. But I need you to coach me along a little bit.

First, can you describe exactly what you want the user experience to be in some canonical (typical) case where the adapters today are insufficient.

Next, tell me what you know about how others have provided the sorts of hooks that you found convenient so you could add your JavaScript and do what you need to do.

Finally, if you have looked at the kit's source code for the adapters or even just its rendered markup... would you like to give any suggestions for specific code/markup changes you think we could/should make to the kit.  This, of course, is the most direct way to suggest exactly what you want or need... but I recognize that you may not have the time to dig into the problem that deeply.  I just want you to feel assured that I'm perfectly happy to consider any improved code that you wish to submit for use in a future rev of the kit.

Of course, I'm very glad to hear that you considering using the adapters in a project soon.  Best of luck with that.  Keep in touch.

First, can you describe exactly what you want the user experience to be in some canonical (typical) case where the adapters today are insufficient:

I think the problem is in one's perspective, server controls of course are server-centric. I view the best web solutions as what I term a "rich client" experience and as such much of the functionality of the application is browser based and of course this requires lots of javascript. As I said above Atlas is cool but there is still server interaction that is often totally unnessary. A user clicking on a menu item should be able to invoke an action that is totally implemented client side for instance change a local setting or displaying hidden Divs on the page to implement a "paged" look . Menus are probably not the best way to do this last example  as in my last project we used a tree control.

Next, tell me what you know about how others have provided the sorts of hooks that you found convenient so you could add your JavaScript and do what you need to do.

I think that it is easiest to refer you to the vendor whose tools I used on my last project, Telerik. They have an impressive toolset but it is not without problems especially in the cross browser issues. All of their controls fire a rich array of client events e.g for menus there are mouseover, mouseout , clicked etc. and of course server side if desired. http://www.telerik.com/r.a.d.controls/Menu/Examples/Programming/ClientEvents/DefaultCS.aspx . On my last project we even wrote our own Toolbar button that would fire client/ server side or both. This is the kind of flexabilty that I believe a developer needs but of course the telerik and ComponentArt controls are not free .

Your last point will take some time but I will. As a contractor in pricing a project to a client I will try and convince them to pay for the Telerik controls but my fall back are CSS friendly control adapters