I have an xml data source. I have a description field that has html data(a paypal button & dropdown list)in it
I replaced the < & > with $lt; and with $gt; tags

When I read the xml file the paypal button and ddl appear but they don't function. They are frozen.

My asp code that reads the data is shown below followed by the XML

I tried this change <%#Eval<Server.HTMLEncode(("Description"))%>
but it didn't solve the problem


<CODE>
<asp:GridViewID="GridViewCategories"runat="server"AutoGenerateColumns="False"
AllowPaging="true"PageSize="10"DataSourceID="ObjectDataSourceCategories"BorderWidth="0"
BorderColor="white">
<Columns>
<asp:TemplateField>
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:ImageID="Image1"CssClass="photo-border photo-float-left"runat="server"Width="90px"
Height="60px"ImageUrl='<%# "http://p2p.wrox.com/images/" + Eval("ImageUrl") %>'AlternateText='<%#Eval("ImageAltText")%>'/>
<b>
<asp:HyperLinkID="HyperLink2"runat="server"NavigateUrl='<%# "Items.aspx?catId=" + Eval("id") %>'>
<%# Eval("Title")%>
</asp:HyperLink>
</b>
<br/>
<%#Eval("Description")%>
<br/>
<br/>
<asp:HyperLinkID="HyperLink5"runat="server"ImageUrl="http://p2p.wrox.com/images/arrow.gif"NavigateUrl='<%# "Items.aspx?catId=" + Eval("id") %>'/>
<asp:HyperLinkID="HyperLink4"runat="server"NavigateUrl='<%# "Items.aspx?catId=" + Eval("id") %>'>
Read More
</asp:HyperLink>
<hr/>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:TemplateField>
</Columns>
<PagerSettingsMode="NumericFirstLast"Position="TopAndBottom"/>
</asp:GridView>
<CODE>


my xml is

<category>
<id>c02</id>
<visible>true</visible>
<title>Flexibility, Contortion</title>
<description>
&lt;form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"&gt;
&lt;input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_s-xclick"/&gt;
&lt;input type="hidden" name="hosted_button_id" value="xxxxx"/&gt;
&lt;table&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;input type="hidden" name="on0" value="Number of Students"/&gt;Number of Students
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;
&lt;td&gt;
&lt;select name="os0"&gt;
&lt;option value="2 - Total Price:"&gt;2 - Total Price: $60.00&lt;/option&gt;
&lt;option value="3 - Total Price:"&gt;3 - Total Price: $75.00&lt;/option&gt;
&lt;option value="4 - Total Price:"&gt;4 - Total Price: $100.00&lt;/option&gt;
&lt;/select&gt;
&lt;/td&gt;
&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"/&gt;
&lt;input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!"/&gt;
&lt;img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1"/&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;
</description>
<imageUrl>cat02.jpg</imageUrl>
<imageAltText></imageAltText>
<parentCategoryId>NULL</parentCategoryId>
</category>

The solution, perhaps not the most elegant, was interesting to me so I will share it here.
I copied the html paypal button code (for each button) into my XML database.
Note that each button has form tags
Note-had to fix their buttons. the img and input tags didn't have closing tags
Next I escasped the < " > symbols by doing replacements &lt; &quot; &gt;
I then viewed the calling aspx page and got a resource not available error.
I did a View Source and realized that the html for the buttons was correct.
The translation from HTML to XML was not a problem after the escaping.
I then remembered that I had this problem before on the predecessor site.
So what I did was change my master page for this one page only to
a master page that doesn't have form tags- I just deleted them. All of the buttons work perfectly now (even
though the calling page is an aspx page), albeit one that uses a master page that doesn't have form tags.
Hope this helps someone with a similar problem.