Under an .aspx page I need to ask the user a simple question eg
Proceed or Cancel ? Is there any kind of Windows forms MessageBox
equivalent under the asp.net (written with vb.net) ? Or do I have to always do a postback and display some kind of panel with Yes/No buttons? What's the best design for this sort of thing?
TIA
Chas, Canterbury UK

You are limited to the capabilities of HTML for this I'm afraid. There is the client side "confirm()" method, but this returns only to the client. You'd need to capture the return in client-side script and use this is some way to cause a postback so you know at the server that something happened. Alternatively, as you mentioned, you could create a new window to serve as a "dialog" that has the confirmation within it. Then you have to figure out how to link the two together. That's about all you can do.

Depending on what capabilities you are allowing for the client side code, you could make a nicer looking "dialog" using some DHTML that is on the same page. This dialog layer could then float on top of the rest of the page. Because the layer is still part of the page it's living on, the controls in it could be standard server controls (buttons). When you answer the dialog it causes a postback and the result of the dialog (yes or no) could be handled as a server event.

Here is an example of Peter's idea that I often use:

<form ...>
<input type=submit onclick="if(confirm('Are you sure?'))hiddenfield.value=true;else hiddenfield.value=false;this.form.submit()">
<input type=hidden id=hiddenfield value=''>
</form>

HTH,

Snib

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