Datalist CSS lagging

[MadTurtle]

The basic scenario:

I have a tab control that is really just a Datalist which contains an ItemTemplate and SelectedItemTemplate. A LinkButton is contained in each of these templates with a CSS style applied to it (Selected and Unselected appropriately).

The control works BUT it lags behind by one selection. What I mean by this is that if index 0 is selected(set when the control is loaded), none of the items appear to be selected. If I then select index 2, in the SelectedIndexChanged event the index is actually 2 BUT the CSS class for 'selected' is assigned to the Linkbutton in index 0. If I then select index 3 on the control the selected index in the event IS 3 but the CSS gets applied to index 2 (the index I selected in the previous selection)

I am sure that I could just set the CSS class to all buttons to the 'unselected' CSS class and then programatically set the class for the selected index but this seems like a hack to me.

The markup for the Datalist is as follows:

<asp:DataList ID="dlTabControl" runat="server" CssClass="left" RepeatDirection="Horizontal" BorderWidth="0px">
<ItemTemplate>
<asp:LinkButton ID="btnName" CssClass="UnselectedTab" runat="server" CommandName="select" Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>' CommandArgument='<%# Eval("Value") %>' />
</ItemTemplate>
<SelectedItemTemplate>
<asp:LinkButton ID="btnName" CssClass="SelectedTab" runat="server" CommandName="select" Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>' CommandArgument='<%# Eval("Value") %>' />
</SelectedItemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>


Has anyone seen this before or have any idea how to correct it? My gut tells me that the SelectedItemTemplate should be applied to the selected index but for some reason it is lagging one step behind.

[MadTurtle]

Solution:

I found the solution to this problem. I had not rebound the data in the SelectedIndexChanged event because although the data was dynamic (the tabs could change depending on selections made earlier in the application), once the page had been loaded the data would remain the same (my tabs didn't change).

Apparently the data must still be rebound to get the templates to load in the correct order so even though the selectedindex of the datalist was showing the correct index this wasn't taking effect until the data was rebound.

I am still not exactly sure why this is the case, since the control did not loose the data it had been assigned previously (the tabs always maintained their values from the initial load) but it works so I am happy. =)

If anyone cares to enlighten me to why this makes a difference I am all ears (and will check back here a few more times for info).

-MT