I am using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.  I have a simple master page, and several content pages.  I want my content pages to load within the existing view of the master page without the master page refreshing each time a new content page is selected by site visitor.

Is there a "simple" way to accomplish this?

Thanks for any help provided.

Demiglaz

No, if each page is a different page, the browser will be redirected and the new page will be loaded. The only way you could achieve that functionality is to use frames or AJAX to load the content but I wouldn't recommend either approach really.

Well, the only solution I have discovered on my own is to use the AJAX feature UpdatePanel within an AJAX-enabled site.  Are you saying you would recommend against that?  If so, why.

I believe VWD (including the new Beta) does not support frames.  I am having a hard time understanding why such a common piece of functionality is so difficult to pull off within ASP.NET.

Thanks for your help and insight.  Very much appreciated!

Demiglaz:

Well, the only solution I have discovered on my own is to use the AJAX feature UpdatePanel within an AJAX-enabled site.  Are you saying you would recommend against that?  If so, why.

I'm not recommending that you avoid AJAX, but it's best usage is so that you can update various portions of the same page without a full page postback. What you want to do is entirely different as you want to update the content with different pages and that's where I would avoid using AJAX methodologies.

Demiglaz:

I am having a hard time understanding why such a common piece of functionality is so difficult to pull off within ASP.NET.

It's got nothing to do with ASP.NET. This is how web applications work (user requests a page, the server sends it) and regardless of the server side technology you've used to implement them, it will still have the same outcome.