I am 100% sure what you are tyring achieve. Can't understand where is that text area - is it in the MenuItemTemplate or is it a separate control on the page. But the cleanest solution for me is to use the Client Side API for WebDataMenu. There is open method that each DataMenuItem has. So, when you load the content for your text area, you may want obtain an instance of WebDataMenuItem and then call its open method. This will cause the opening of the full path to where that item is  (regardless of how deep it is in the menu hierarchy). You could use the resolveItem(address) method of the WebDataMenu client object to get instance of the item you wish to open. Other way of obatining an instance of WebDataMenuItem that you need to open after loading the content for your textarea is to handle the client side Click event of the WebDataMenu. The handler shall have two parameters:

function wdmItemClick(menu, eventArgs) { ... }

The eventArgs has method "getItem()" which will give direct reference to the client object instance for the clicked item. You can set it to a globally scoped variable and just call the open() method of that globally scoped variable when your content loads.

The main point is that you can't have menu staying opened when it loses focus. If your content loads fast enough, and you call open(), the menu may still stay openened. You can control to some extend the behavior. You may first want to set the CloseMenuOnClick property to false, then adjust the SubMenuClosingDelay to some higher value (value is in milli seconds) to keep the submenus opened for longer after losing focus (you want it to stay open during your content loading and after that).

Hope this helps!

You can take a look at http://www.sternenweg.net/detailseite.aspx       

Thanks

Patric             

It is good that you solved your issues. However, looking at your other post (http://ko.infragistics.com/community/forums/t/71197.aspx), I have commented at the bottom, that it might be a better idea to have everything more AJAX style and handle everything on the client side. For example - handle the client Click event, not the server one. Then load the content cia AJAX, and finally prevent the menu from closing, by cancling the ItemCollapsing client side event. I think this way you will achieve much better user experience, and it is not that complex to implement. I would say maybe even easier than what you did now.

Cheers,

The final hint in this direction came from my other post: http://ko.infragistics.com/community/forums/t/71197.aspx

function wdm_Menu_Init(sender, args) {

 if (sender.get_selectedItem() != null) {   

   alert(sender.get_selectedItem().get_valueString());

   // to heavy !!  sender.get_selectedItem().dispose();

   // no result !! sender.get_selectedItem().set_selected(false);

   // works, but also freeze!! sender.get_selectedItem().open();   

  }  

var adresse = $("[id$='hf_Menu']").val()        

//alert(adresse);        

var Item1 = sender.resolveItem(adresse);        

Item1.open();

}

Not a real solution, but a workaround for me!