Populate control without postback

Hey I apologise if this has been answered previously, and/or this is in the wrong forum.

There is either a very long or very quick answer to this question - I need to show a certain set of asp.net controls depending on what asp.net button is pressed. However, I don't want the buttons to make a roundtrip to the server / postback every time they are clicked. Obviously even with AJAX, the button still does a postback which means it takes 3/4 seconds to show the control depending on bandwidth.

My current version has 3 seperate views in a multiview and shows a different view depending on which button is pressed - is this too much to ask to have this fire with javascript??! Apologies for my ignorance.

Which version of .NET are you using? If it's .NET 2.0, you can download the AJAX.NET framework and use an Update Panel. (http://ajax.asp.net)

If you're using .NET 1.1, the easiest way would be to buy a set of ajax controls from one a 3rd party vendor. (ComponentOne, ComponentArt or Terelik) There are ways to code it by hand, but it's definately more work to incorporate it into the framework and postbacks. I'd use the other hard work.

Like I say, I have ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX installed, but with the control in an updatepanel event though it does not refresh the page it still makes a server round-trip. I am currently experimenting with custom web controls and it seems like this is getting me somewhere :confused:

Thanks for your help.

Take a look at this JavaScript tab pane class. This may help you out some. All of the HTML will be rendered to the Browser at once, and then all pages will be available at the same time. This is the best completely Client Side tab control I've seen.

http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/tabpane/tabpane.html