Loading .aspx into a Panel/UpdatePanel

Question

Hi everyone. I'm currently working on a web-based game using ASP.NET and C#. Previously, I've been just organizing the various game screens(start, hi-score, results, etc) into individual Panels nested within a main UpdatePanel and showing/hiding the appropriate Panels as the game progresses. However, I've severely underestimated the scale of the game and I'm gonna have to break it down to more manageable chunks.

My idea now is to have a Main.aspx with an empty UpdatePanel and I'll load the various screens as individual .aspx files into it. Kinda like with WinForms I think, when you create another new WinForm and add it to the current parent form.

I've been trying to find how to get about doing this in the code-behind, but I'm still at a lost. I could probably do this with Response.Redirect, but then there would be the usual flicker when the new page loads, which is something I want to avoid.

I did come across something interesting called a UFrame but that seems to work in the HTML instead of the code-behind.

I appreciate any help or suggestions in this matter, and apologize if this has been asked before. Thank you.

Edit: With regards to womp's answer, .ascx seem to be a step in the right direction for me. I successfully got my Startscreen control control up and running inside the Main.aspx. However, another problem has popped up, where the screen just goes blank when I try to add another usercontrol to a panel inside Main.aspx upon a button click.

The event handler I have for a button in the Startscreen control is:

protected void Btn_Arcade_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        this.Parent.Controls.Add(LoadControl("Arcade.ascx"));

    }

I'm not too sure if there's anything wrong with that, but the Parent in this case is basically what I called the GameContentPanel that resides within Main.aspx's UpdatePanel.

I don't think it's a problem with the HTML fudging up either, since I tested it by loading it first instead of the Startscreen, and everything showed up fine.

I've also tried loading both controls together at the start in Main.aspx, and both controls load correctly as well.

Answer 1

Can the "screens" be .ascx usercontrols? You can load a usercontrol into a panel using LoadControl("~/path/to/myControl.ascx"), and then those controls can take part in the lifecycle of the main page.

If they really have to be in separate .aspx pages, then you might need to look at using an iframe, or else maybe rethinking your approach. Webforms apps were designed to have lots of things happening inside the context of one page/form, and not transferring control back and forth to multiple pages.