C# – Sending Event from a Page to its Master Page in ASP.NET

If you open the .aspx file and switch between design view and html view and back it will prompt VS to check the controls and add any that are missing to the designer file.

In VS2013-15 there is a Convert to Web Application command under the Project menu. Prior to VS2013 this option was available in the right-click context menu for as(c/p)x files. When this is done you should see that you now have a *.Designer.cs file available and your controls within the Design HTML will be available for your control.

PS: This should not be done in debug mode, as not everything is "recompiled" when debugging.

Some people have also reported success by (making a backup copy of your .designer.cs file and then) deleting the .designer.cs file. Re-create an empty file with the same name.

There are many comments to this answer that add tips on how best to re-create the designer.cs file.

Have you considered using a Web.sitemap file? It makes it real easy. If your sitemap file looks like this...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<siteMap xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/AspNet/SiteMap-File-1.0" >
  <siteMapNode>
    <siteMapNode url="~/Default.aspx" title="Home"  description="" />
    <siteMapNode url="~/Blog.aspx" title="Blog"  description="" />
    <siteMapNode url="~/AboutUs.aspx" title="AboutUs"  description="" />
  </siteMapNode>
</siteMap>

...then you can do this in your master page to achieve the results you want:

<asp:SiteMapDataSource ID="sitemapdata" runat="server" ShowStartingNode="false"  />
<ul id="navigation">
    <asp:Repeater runat="server" ID="navrepeater" DataSourceID="sitemapdata">
        <ItemTemplate>
            <li class="<%# SiteMap.CurrentNode.Equals(Container.DataItem) ? "activenav" : "inactivenav" %>"><a href="<%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "url") %>"><%# DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, "title") %></a></li>
        </ItemTemplate>
    </asp:Repeater>
</ul>

The current page's LI will have a class of "activenav" (or whatever you decide to use), and the others will have a class of "inactivenav". You can write your CSS accordingly. This is the technique I use on my site and it works great.