Another tidbit. Looking at online documentation, the Keyboard Navigation topic for the WebDropDown tells me what keys should be working with it.

Most keys do nothing but scroll the page. I get no response from the webdropdown using Ctrl-uparrow/downarrow or any of the navigation keys when I have it open and have clicked on a selection (using the mouse).

Is there some client side or server side event I need to be handling with this thing? 

BTW I'd be happy to share my desktop in a WebEx session if you'd like to see what I see.

My issue continues.

My SaveSystemTypes procedure does essentially what you suggest. The reference in the ItemUpdating event was only for me to look at the webdropdown in the debugger.

Now I have..

    Protected Sub FormView1_ItemUpdating(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormViewUpdateEventArgs) Handles FormView1.ItemUpdating
        e.NewValues.Item("AgencyKey") = CType(Me.FormView1.FindControl("DropDownList_AgencyLocation"), DropDownList).SelectedValue
        e.NewValues.Item("Modified_By") = Session("UserName").ToString
        e.NewValues.Item("Modified_Date") = DateTime.Now.ToShortDateString
        e.NewValues.Item("AsOf") = e.NewValues.Item("Modified_Date")
        e.NewValues.Item("AssessmentDetailsKey") = Session("AssessmentDetailsKey").ToString
        e.NewValues.Item("AgencyKey") = CType(Me.FormView1.FindControl("DropDownList_AgencyLocation"), DropDownList).SelectedValue

        Dim ThisWebDropDown As WebDropDown = CType(Me.FormView1.FindControl("WebDropDown1"), WebDropDown)

        For Each ThisItem As DropDownItem In ThisWebDropDown.SelectedItems
            If ThisItem.Selected Then
                Debugger.Break()
            End If
        Next

    End Sub 

so I can see what is selected.

What I see is the items that were selected after I initially loaded the webdropdown.

Say I have seven items that are selected when the form loads. I select the items in the Formview databound event. I Click on Edit in the formview to open edit mode. I open the dropdown and see all seven items selected as expected.

Now I unselect 3 of those items and select one additional item. In the dropdown I now have 5 items selected. I can close and open the dropdown and the 5 items are still selected as expected.

Now I click Update. My formview_Updating event (above) fires. In the for loop, my  ThisWebDropDown.SelectedItems count is 7! The selected items it loops through are the original 7 selected items I started with. My changes are gone.

Is there some particular key or click I have to do to make the changes in the webdropdown be saved?  so far I just use the mouse to open the dropdown, select/unselect, and close the dropdown.

Further mystery - One of our remote testers today managed to save changes in the webdropdown once. Absolutely unknown what she did (naturally she can't remember). She is using IE7 which I do not have (although IE8 in compatibility mode doesn't change anything for me.

I'm   getting desperate to get this working.

Right. I had tried using no updatepanel at all, using a plain AJAX updatepanel, and a WARP panel. I didn't get anywhere with any attempt.

Thanks.

Hello,

I just wanted to let you know that WebDropDown control is not compatible with WARP, i have seen somewhere in your code.