This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Jason Nadal. Original Post: RE: Master-Page-Limitation in ASP.NET 2.0 Feed Title: Jason Nadal Feed URL: http://www.asp.net/err404.htm?aspxerrorpath=/jnadal/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Restless C#ding Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Jason Nadal Latest Posts From Jason Nadal

The concept of Masterpages introduced in ASP.NET “Whidbey” is really fascinating. But it seems to have one major limitation, which appears to make it quite unusable in bigger Web-Applications: There seems to be no functionality, which allows a developer to programmatically change the used Master-Page at runtime.

If you think so, you should read this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/06/ASPNET20MasterPages/default.aspx

After reading this, you'll be able to change the MasterPage at runtime using the new PreInit-Event:

protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e)
{
  this.MasterPageFile = "OtherTemplate.master";
  base.OnPreInit(e);
}

Protected Overrides Sub OnPreInit(ByVal e As EventArgs)
   Me.MasterPageFile = "OtherTemplate.master"
   MyBase.OnPreInit(e)
End Sub

And after all, the concepts of MasterPages should work. :-)

Thanks to Scott Galloway (http://www.mostlylucid.co.uk) for his hint on this topic.