In a scenario we use frequently here, we display old classic ASP pages as modal dialogs using window.showModalDialog. When the page is loaded, we read the dialogArguments property and away we go.
Now, as far as a classic ASP page goes, that's fairly a no-brainer. But things got a little complicated when we upgraded some of those pages to ASPX pages, and they became hybrid ASP/ASPX pages. Basically, they're still just ASP pages, they just have an ASPX extension. Well, that complicates the debugging process when true ASPX pages try to step into their code. As you can imagine, they just can't.
So we need to port them to true ASPX pages, and that's where things get wonky. We've hit The DialogArguments Wall™, and I'm a bit confuzzled about how to tackle it. I suppose that from a technical standpoint what I don't really understand is how the information in dialogArguments and dialogResult gets passed to and from the page that displays the dialog in the first place. Given what I know about them, it seems like these are entirely JScript variables, which would explain why they don't exist server-side, and you can't access them at all.
That brings us to the issue at hand. If a page is loading, and it needs to know what the dialog arguments are, how does it go about determining what they are? Does it simply have to be redesigned to insist that those arguments are passed via the querystring or some other similar mechanism?
Similarly, how does an ASPX page properly return a dialogResult to the page that displayed it? I suppose I could inject some clever script into the bottom of the page upon postback, but that seems a bit tricky and hackish.
I'm open to suggestions. Thanks in advance.