Ajax Control Toolkit TabContainer

Modified on 2010/04/16 01:15 by Stephen Walther — Categorized as: Uncategorized

TabContainer is an ASP.NET AJAX Control which creates a set of Tabs that can be used to organize page content. A TabContainer is a host for a number of TabPanel controls.

Each TabPanel defines its HeaderText or HeaderTemplate as well as a ContentTemplate that defines its content. The most recent tab should remain selected after a postback, and the Enabled state of tabs should remain after a postback as well.

Tabs Server Properties

The properties in italics are optional.

<ajaxToolkit:TabContainer runat="server" 
        OnClientActiveTabChanged="ClientFunction" 
        Height="150px">
    <ajaxToolkit:TabPanel runat="server" 
        HeaderText="Signature and Bio"
        <ContentTemplate>
            ...
        </ContentTemplate>
    />
</ajaxToolkit:TabContainer>

TabContainer Properties

ActiveTabChanged (Event) - Fired on the server side when a tab is changed after a postback
OnClientActiveTabChanged - The name of a javascript function to attach to the client-side tabChanged event
CssClass - A css class override used to define a custom look and feel for the tabs. See the Tabs Theming section for more details.
ActiveTabIndex - The first tab to show
Height - sets the height of the body of the tabs (does not include the TabPanel headers)
Width - sets the width of the body of the tabs
ScrollBars - Whether to display scrollbars (None, Horizontal, Vertical, Both, Auto) in the body of the TabContainer
TabStripPlacement - Whether to render the tabs on top of the container or below (Top, Bottom)

TabPanel Properties

Enabled - Whether to display the Tab for the TabPanel by default. This can be changed on the client.
OnClientClick - The name of a javascript function to attach to the client-side click event of the tab.
HeaderText - The text to display in the Tab
HeaderTemplate - A TemplateInstance.Single ITemplate to use to render the header
ContentTemplate - A TemplateInstance.Single ITemplate to use to render the body

You can change the look and feel of Tabs using the Tabs CssClass property. Tabs has a predefined set of CSS classes that can be overridden. It has a default style which is embedded as a WebResource and is a part of the Toolkit assembly that has styles set for all the sub-classes. You can find the default styles in the Toolkit solution in the "AjaxControlToolkit\Tabs\Tabs.css" file. If your CssClass does not provide values for any of those then it falls back to the default value. In the example above the default style is used. To customize the same the user would have to set the CssClass property to the name of the CSS style and define the styles for the individual classes so that the various elements in a Tab control can be styled accordingly. For example if the CssClass property was set to "CustomTabStyle" this is how the css to style the tab header would look:

.CustomTabStyle .ajax__tab_header {
    font-family:verdana,tahoma,helvetica;
    font-size:11px;
    background:url(images/tab-line.gif) repeat-x bottom;
}

Tabs CSS classes

.ajax__tab_header: A container element that wraps all of the tabs at the top of the TabContainer. Child CSS classes:.ajax__tab_outer. 
.ajax__tab_outer: An outer element of a tab, often used to set the left-side background image of the tab.Child CSS classes: .ajax__tab_inner. 
.ajax__tab_inner: An inner element of a tab, often used to set the right-side image of the tab. Child CSS classes:.ajax__tab_tab. 
.ajax__tab_tab: An element of the tab that contains the text content. Child CSS classes:none.
.ajax__tab_body: A container element that wraps the area where a TabPanel is displayed. Child CSS classes: none.
.ajax__tab_hover . This is applied to a tab when the mouse is hovering over. Child CSS classes:.ajax__tab_outer. 
.ajax__tab_active: This is applied to a tab when it is the currently selected tab. Child CSS classes:.ajax__tab_outer.