I've spent most of the day trying to figure this out and I've gotten no where. I want the basic funcationality of a DropDownList with a Multi-Select. (Something like AppendDataBoundItems and having a Blank item appear 1st)

Problem:

When the WebDropDown loads and binds, the 1st item contained in the list appears. I do not want this b/c it looks like this item is already selected. But rather I want it to load 'Blank' and the user then clicks the webdropdown and the items selected are added. (Something like the first item is blank - BUT the catch is that this 'Blank'  item should NOT be in the item listing when the user goes to select items from the list)

For example:

Item listing: Green, Blue, Red

When the webdropdown is loaded, Green is in the Dropdown. I had an idea to manually add a 'Blank' value to my returned item list, but the problem then is that there is a blank item to choose from when you go to choose multiple items. so then it looks like this when all is select   , Green, Blue, Red (The blank value at front)

I believe this is the reason that the RequiredFieldValidator isnt working for me also with the webdropdown.

I've done nothing fancy with the webdropdown, basic stuff.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think this VERY COMMON functionally should be included somewhere in this thing. If not, I've wasted about 5 hours researching and trying different approaches.

Thanks