I decided to put the tab initialize in the OnInit for the page.  See snippet:

protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e)

{

        base.OnInit(e);

        Tabs.InstantiateTemplates();

        EnsureChildControls();

}

This works along with the html like:

<

PostBackOptions EnableAjax="true" EnableAsyncUpdateAllTabs="true" EnableLoadOnDemand="false" />

The update panel on the tab works fine now.

i think that i solved this by checking for null before assigning values to the controls; this was so i believe because there were are a number of post backs taking place (my tab was in a user control).

I am having this "null" issue on postback using the WebTab.  Everything is null, nothing is loaded on postback even with the ViewState enabled.  I can't seem to find anything else about this in the forums.  I can't imagine that I have to manually reload every control on the tabs even when they are all loaded with the aspx page.

Is that really what has to be done?

Ha, no joke.