I've created a master page that surrounds a contentplaceholder with an update panel:
asp:updatepanel id="upMain" runat="server"
ContentTemplate
asp:ContentPlaceholder id="mainContent" runat="server"
.../asp:ContentPlaceholder
.../ContentTemplate
.../asp:Updatepanel
The website runs correctly, but every server control inside the content place holder in content pages is underlined and the 'element X is not a known element' error is listed in the Error List window. This applies to all server controls: textboxes, labels, etc.