<p>Here is one trivial question, that I am not sure how to handle.
I need to display list of categories on every page, and to be able to choose items from a specific category to be displayed. I use asp.net MVC, and have chosen to create a user control that will display categories. My question is: what is the best approach to pass data to a user control. I already found some information in these blog posts:</p>

<p><a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/08/12/asp-net-mvc-tip-31-passing-data-to-master-pages-and-user-controls.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://weblogs.asp.net/stephenwalther/archive/2008/08/12/asp-net-mvc-tip-31-passing-data-to-master-pages-and-user-controls.aspx</a></p>

<p><a href="http://blog.matthidinger.com/2008/02/21/ASPNETMVCUserControlsStartToFinish.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://blog.matthidinger.com/2008/02/21/ASPNETMVCUserControlsStartToFinish.aspx</a></p>

<p>I would like also to hear your opinion.</p>

<p>PS. I'd like to hear Jeff's opinion, especially because of his experience with UC's on Stackoverflow</p>

[{'answer_id': 13580, 'author': 'Hrvoje Hudo', 'author_id': 1407, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1407', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I\'m using mvc components, which replaced ascx user controls in preview 4.<br>\nExample:\n<a href="http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/asp-net-mvc-preview-4-componentcontroller-is-now-renderaction/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/asp-net-mvc-preview-4-componentcontroller-is-now-renderaction/</a><br>\nSo, you call components action from View, which then choose View to render. You can pass data in this call also. </p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 13584, 'author': 'Dragan Panjkov', 'author_id': 481, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/481', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>it is the mvc futures project. i will probably try this\n<a href="http://forums.asp.net/t/1303328.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://forums.asp.net/t/1303328.aspx</a>. I need to render menu with categories.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/13561', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/481/']