.rpGroup .rpLink,

.rpGroup .rpOut

background-color: transparent;

background-image: url('Images/SubItemStates.png');

background-repeat: no-repeat;

}

If I remove the reference to the ".RadPanelBar .rpGroup .rpLink" It will display the bar normally but the right end cap is missing. If the reference is included It will display the top part of the end cap but it also includes the bottom 10px of the bar. If I could adjust the height, add 10px to the original background (bar image) size, using a CSS style that would fix the problem. But I cannot figure out were to add it.

I don't really understand this method of displaying a sizeable background image bar. Any help in understanding this would be greatly appreciated, more importantly how to fix it would be even more appreciated!!!

Thank you!!

~Jason

<Columns>

<telerik:GridClientSelectColumn UniqueName="ClientSelectColumn" />

<telerik:GridBoundColumn DataField="MailingEnvelopeID" DataType="System.Int32" HeaderText="MailingEnvelopeID" ReadOnly="True" SortExpression="MailingEnvelopeID" UniqueName="MailingEnvelopeID" Visible="False">

<HeaderStyle Width="0px">

</HeaderStyle>

</telerik:GridBoundColumn>

<telerik:GridBoundColumn DataField="MailingEnvelope" HeaderText="Mailing Envelope" ReadOnly="True" SortExpression="MailingEnvelope" UniqueName="MailingEnvelope">

<HeaderStyle Width="320px">

</HeaderStyle>

</telerik:GridBoundColumn>

</Columns>

The more complex my forms get the more I see control events fired that I'd like to eliminate.  With a completely ajaxified site, additional rules come into play about what gets processed on the server even if we're only doing partial postbacks.  To minimize the burden on the server, some activity should be moved to the client.

None of this is unique to RadControls, but effective use of RadControls is only possible when someone has a solid handle on all of the base concepts.  I know that my understanding of the ASP.NET page life cycle is limited and only time and more reading will help to internalize the entire process.  But I know I'm not alone, and many issues that people face here are directly related to ineffective management of the entire page cycle.

I know a lot of questions can be answered by taking a week-long class on advanced ASP.NET with a quality provider.  But "for the masses" I'm wondering if anyone is aware of free resources, hopefully provided by Telerik, that walk through the full execution of components from client to server so that we can get a good handle on exactly what is happening under the covers.  Here are examples of the sort of information that I think would be helpful to everyone.  I don't want the answers to specific questions, these are just examples of the scope/categories of questions that people may have:

• Some code is best put in server-side Page_Init rather than Page_Load.  What are the rules for determining this?
• Some code is best in PreRender or other events.  Why?
• What should we specifically eliminate from Page_Load or other life cycle events to minimize transaction time and redundant activity?
• When we see Init, Load, and other events firing for ajaxified controls that are unrelated to an event that we're processing, is that a bad thing?
• What's the best way to prevent a data source from re-binding a control that doesn't seem to need a data refresh.  In other words, the user selects an item from a databound list and then clicks a button - how do we stop the list from getting repopulated on unrelated partial postbacks?
• What are some good examples of events where a call to the server on partial postback can be replaced with a client-side event?
• When and how do we replace a partial postback with a client-side web service call?

 
If I could get a dream realized I would find the following resources:

• A chat room with people actively discussing these topics.  Heck, it's easy to create any number of IRC channels.
• A forum section under this Ajax forum dedicated to event handling.
• Blogs discussing topics like these in-depth.
• Telerik TV full of "Watch Minute" sessions on specific events and aspects of client vs server handling.
• Telerik Help pages, articles, etc on using controls in the context of the page cycle, in addition to the more mundane details of class members and control placement.
• Lots of tiny examples of specific types of event handling.  Unfortunately the Telerik examples include lots of "stuff" that complicate their examples, like external scripts and CSS, header and footer controls, and other code modules that are required to support the plumbing of the core examples.  Of course these help us to understand more complex usage of the software, but it would be really nice to also have smaller, more "atomic" examples with fewer dependencies, with controls used in different ways in the page life cycle.

What do you think?