You can manage a group of controls and associated markup as a unit by putting them in a Panel control and then manipulating the Panel control. For example, you can hide or show a group of controls inside a panel by setting the panel's Visible property.

You can put TextBox controls and Button controls inside the Panel control and then define a default button by setting the Panel control's DefaultButton property to the ID of a button in the panel. If users press ENTER while typing in a text box inside the panel, it has the same effect as if the user had clicked the specified default button. This can help users work more efficiently with entry forms.

The Panel control provides a convenient container for controls that you create at run time. For details, see Adding ASP.NET Controls Programmatically.

You can use the Panel control to create areas on the page that have custom appearance and behavior, such as the following:

• Adding scrollbarsВ В В If you set the Height and Width properties to constrain the Panel control to a specific size, you can add scrollbars by setting the ScrollBars property.

• Creating a grouping box with titleВ В В You can set the GroupingText property to display a title. When the page renders, the Panel control is displayed with a box around it that contains a title with the text you specify.

  Note
  You cannot specify both scrollbars and grouping text in the Panel control. If you set grouping text, it takes precedence over scrollbars.

• Creating areas on the page with a custom color or other appearanceВ В В The Panel control supports appearance properties such as BackColor and BorderWidth that you can set to create a unique look for a region on a page.

  Note
  Setting the GroupingText property automatically renders a border around the Panel control.

Tasks