mvc 3 partials and usage

Question

We meet again stackpeople! I have been using the last 2 days trying to find the answer I need.I can't seem to find a straight forward answer on WHEN to use partialviews I know you can use em for like login component and all the other fancy stuff .

But what about the navigation bar ? I tried making the navigationbar with partials and Ajax.htmlactionlink but then the problem comes, I know since its just a partial my URL won't get rewritten which means on f5 it will always update my home/index since no URL was given . Is this cus I can't make my navi like that or just because im plain stupid ?:)

Answer 1

Partials should be used to avoid code duplication. Create one if you find yourself writing the same view code over and over again.

A navigation bar sounds more like something that should be in the layout. You can use Sections in Razor and ContentPlaceHolder for the webforms view engine if you want to let pages customize the layout.

Answer 2

I don't think the partials have anything to do with it(it shouldn't, partials are just a way to split up source files so you can reuse them later).
I'm guessing the problem lies in the use of AjaxhtmlActionlinks, why would you want to do an Ajax call to redirect the user?
Try using the normal @Html.ActionLink()