>Please let me know if this is the right approach. There may be an easier way and I’m all for learning easy.

Yea.. I think you got it. Keeping the contained controls hidded and creating public properties and methods on the user control is the way to maintain OOP encapsulation. This way you can change the internal controls and not break other code.

However, latley I have been liking server controls much more. You can also use them in grids which isn't to easy with user controls.

I generally like to reserve user controls more for layout rather than functionaliy. For example, my menu might be in one user control... stuff like that.

BOb