ASP.net disable refresh when dropdownlist is open
<p>i have a webpage that loads data into a gridview and refreshes the gridview every few seconds. I do this via a asp:Timer which runs a C# function every few seconds to requery the database and databind the gridview.</p>

<p>I also have a few dropdown lists to filter data from the gridview. These dropdown lists get their data from the same dataset as the gridview (e.g. if the gridview shows the stats of all apples being plucked from trees, then the list may contain e.g. all distinct apple types). How i refresh these dropdown lists is again to requery the dataset and reset the selected index to be one selected at time of refresh. So this causes a problem where the timer is up when the dropdown list is open - the index on the dropdown list is selected and refreshes the gridview, the dropdown list also refreshes with the current selected index and closes.</p>

<p>So the question i have how to disable my timer refresh from going off while the dropdown lists are active - or maybe how do i do this better?</p>

<p>edit: forgot to mention that i'm using ajax / UpdatePanel for the refresh</p>
