ASP.NET Drop down list - first item selection problem

Hello hammdan_1980,

This is why you very often see something like ' - Select a **** - ' as the first item in a dropdownlist. Because the initially selected item does not fire the onchange event you need to provide a mechanism that forces the user to choose one of your items.

Even if this is a databound list it is easy to do, when you have bound the dropdown then simply use:

mydropdownlist.Items.Insert(0, New ListItem('- Select one -',-1))

For example.

Regards,

TimCottee

Hi Tim,

The problem is that when user first enter my page the first item which is displaying empty text
        ListItem li = new ListItem("","0", true);
        ddl.Items.Insert(0, li);
is displayed.. and the content of page as default no selection is also displayed.,, now user will selected different option and different content will be displayed also ,,, then user may re-select the first empty option then i need to display the default content that was in first when enter the page.. But the problem is that DDL always dont fire the selectedIndexChange event when first choice is selected !

any ideas?

hammdan_1980,

I assume that you have the .AutoPostBack set to true on the dropdownlist in order to be firing this event. There is no logical reason for it not to fire when any change is made, providing that the dropdownlist is populated correctly and the selectedindexchanged event should be fired when the page is posted back.

TimCottee

here is my ddl

    <asp:DropDownList ID="ddl" runat="server" Width="225px" AutoPostBack="True"   OnSelectedIndexChanged="ddl_SelectedIndexChanged">
    </asp:DropDownList>

So you can see that the autoPostBack is enabled.

Is it supposed to fire ? when first item re-selected  or it suppose not? i am lost

Thanks, TIm your answers inpired me that i am doing something else wrong .. so problem fixed now i used your help to come up with the bug fixed