Question

Playing around with customizing the appearance of the Wizard control in ASP.Net, and I’ve found out how to disable the sidebar buttons using the SideBarTemplate and catching the OnItemDataBound event. All pretty easy. What I want to do now is to modify the text of the rendered LinkButton to prefix the step name with something like “>>” for the current step.

So, in my ItemDataBound event handler for the SideBarList, I have the following code:

    Dim stepCurrent As WizardStep = e.Item.DataItem
    Dim linkCurrent As LinkButton = e.Item.FindControl("SideBarButton")
    If Not stepCurrent Is Nothing Then
        Trace.Write("SideBar", "Current Step = " & stepCurrent.Wizard.ActiveStep.Name)
        Trace.Write("Sidebar", "Link Button = " & linkCurrent.Text)
        linkCurrent.Enabled = False
        If stepCurrent.Wizard.ActiveStepIndex = e.Item.ItemIndex Then
            linkCurrent.Style.Add(HtmlTextWriterStyle.Color, "#000000")
            linkCurrent.Style.Add(HtmlTextWriterStyle.FontWeight, "bold")
            linkCurrent.Text.Insert(0, ">> ")
        End If
    End If

However, what I find is the trace output is showing an empty string for the lunkbutton text, but the style changes work.

Am I trying to set the text in the wrong place?

Thanks

Answer 1

I did not find any way to change “SideBarButton” text property that is why I added
another link button control in SelectedItemTemplate to DataList and set visible=”fasle” in SideBarButton. SelectedItemTemplate will be used to render item in sidebar for current wizard step.

    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:LinkButton ID="SideBarButton" runat="server"/>
    </ItemTemplate>
    <SelectedItemTemplate>
        <asp:LinkButton ID="ActiveSideBarButton" runat="server">
        <asp:LinkButton Visible="false" ID="SideBarButton"unat="server"/>
    </SelectedItemTemplate>

In OnItemDataBound event do something like

Dim stepCurrent As WizardStep = e.Item.DataItem
If stepCurrent.Wizard.ActiveStepIndex = e.Item.ItemIndex Then
     Dim linkCurrent As LinkButton = e.Item.FindControl("ActiveSideBarButton")
     linkCurrent.Style.Add(HtmlTextWriterStyle.Color, "#000000")
     linkCurrent.Style.Add(HtmlTextWriterStyle.FontWeight, "bold")
     LinkCurrent.Text = stepCurrent.Title;
     linkCurrent.Text.Insert(0, ">> ")
End If

SideBarButton will not be rendered because of visible=”false” and only ActiveSideBarButton for current step will be rendered with parameters you need.