All web application need to display messages to users, including but not limited to erroneous or missing form entries and successful posting or saving of form data. Typically, I would use a label control on the page and set the appropriate text (‘Successful Update’, ‘Missing Email Address’, etc..) and CSS Class. Since I was using the same code on every page on every project. I decided to create a server control(sbcMsgBox) in c# that would reduce the amount of code I would need to write and that would meet the following criteria:

In the following article I will show you how to create a simple accordion menu with JQuery and ASP.NET Visual Studio 2008. There are many implementations of an accordion type menu on the web, including using JQuery UI and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit. For one reason or another these implementations did not work for me, so I decided to roll my own using JQuery and accomplish the following:

1. Simple & valid markup
2. Minimal JavaScript
3. Auto slide open of the accordion menu based on the url
4. Indication of which section is open and which link is active
5. Degrade gracefully if JavaScript is turned off