Declaring a DropDownList in ASP .Net

In the following example, I will show how you can style any asp:dropdownlist very easily.

The example demonstrates how you can change alternating row items background color, using the fadeTo() to add a nice touch in the dropdownlist. You can change alt rows with a couple lines.

"In my application i am using dropdownlist to display all categories from a table. When the user clicks this control I display all records in that category. Category table also contains column called color.

I wanted display some categories in dropdown list different color and others in different color using ASP.NET."-Anonymous

Anybody with much experience in ASP has written an include file function for populating the contents of a SELECT dropdown list with entries from a database. Some of the more advanced users have even gone so far as to add caching to their function to reduce database hits for these rarely changing menu options. Naturally, these same techniques are going to be used with ASP.NET, but with a new programming object model. ASP.NET provides a web control, the DropDownList, which can be used for the same purposes as our custom built SELECT tag from Classic ASP.

Based on my previous control "Multiple Column DropDownList for ASP.NET", I received many emails asking for the same control to be used in the DataGrid for web applications. Here we go.. This control can be used as the regular MS DropDownList in the DataGrid and also as a regular dropdownlist. It has all the properties, like DataTextField, DataValueField, DataSource, SelectedIndex etc. The download file contains the samples both in VB.NET and C#. In this sample, I have used the Northwind database of SQL Server.

Recently, I was looking for a multiple selection dropdownlist control for my new project. After spending some time researching for it, I decided to put together all my finding in one web user control. This web user control consists of an ASP.NET AJAX HoverMenuExtender, JavaScript, StyleSheet and CheckBoxListExCtrl . The final product will work with or without a MasterPage and you can drag and drop more than one instances of the control on to the page.

In .net framework 2.0, you can load a DataTable in memory by consuming a data source using a DataReader. In this version you will find the flexibility in accessing the DataReader means write access code once and use again and again using DataReader. To see the functionality of DataTable consider an example that is created using VS2005.