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MVC - Catching a navigation request on the site controller before the LayOut controller

At my company we are discussing wether or not to got and make our next web app in MVC.
I have been charged to figure out some basic stuff which could stop us dead in our tracks, and so have spend some time figureing out the MVC platform as best i could.
There is however one thing im wondering, is it possible, and if so how - to have a menu made on the _LayOut page/controller, which when a user presses a menu navigation i am able to catch on the specfic page before it goes to the layout controller?
UPDATED I forgot to mention that i want to be able to save a form depending on what site i am on. So i may have 10 pages with different forms and depending on which one of these i am on, i have to save the form on that page using the same link in my menu.
My explaning might be abit off so ill quickly describe the scenario and maybe there is another way of doing this.
The user is filling out alot of data on the page, they then press the navigation menu to go to a new page, i want to save the entered data before navigating to the next page for them.
Sorry for my bad english it is not my primary language.
Thanks in advance for any help.

A way to do what you're looking for is to attach a client-side event handler which submits the data before navigating to a new page. It would look something like this:
$(".navigation a").click(function (event) {
// Get form data, process it and POST/PUT/DELETE
});
If you're supporting modern browsers then you can subscribe to the input event of your form and attach yourself on the before unload if anything in your form has changed since the window was loaded as suggested in one of the comments. If you need to support older browsers as well subscribe to the change event of the input fields in the form in order to attach the handler for beforeunload.
form.oninput = function () {
window.onbeforeunload = submitFormData;
};
function submitFormData() {
// Gather and submit your data
}

How to prefill a form with post data in ASP.NET

I need to populate a form in the main page which on being submitted opens a lightbox which contains another form .
I was planning to submit the form using Post as that seems to be the only way I can define which iframe to open in the lightbox .However my question is that how do I pre-populate the second form with the first forms data when I use the submission as POST
I am using ASP.NET and C#
I apologize for the naive question but I am still playing around with ASP.NET

We dont have many details on items such as - is there a redirect? whats the second form? how are you handling controls.. etc
Check this out to start. If you really need to send values across separate requests there are various ways to do this, but specify if this is what you are trying to do.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178139.aspx

Use the Form collection in the Request object on the second form. The name in the collection is the same as the name in the name/value pair you're using in the post.
TextBox1.Text = Request.Form["someName1"];
TextBox2.Text = Request.Form["someName2"];
Etc.

Using jQuery with ASP.NET to Submit a Form

I've used jQuery dozens of times with PHP with great success. I'm working on an ASP.NET application and would like to use jQuery in the same manner.
Basically, I've got a masterpage that has the form and a webform that has all the form fields and data. A user can submit the form multiple ways - selection of a drop-down, button, etc. I want to catch all submits and use jQuery to submit the form. While the form is being processed, I want to display a new DIV with some text in it. Finally, I want to replace that div with the new form.
How can I accomplish this with the way that ASP.NET works?

Actually ASP.NET will post-back if you use its built-in JavaScript __doPostBack function. There's no other painless way for doing that.
That means you can use jQuery to handle drop-down lists, buttons or whatever (X)HTML element event and handler's body will invoke __doPostBack.
It's unclear that you want is a full-postback, but a partial one using AJAX.
If you're looking for a solution for sending form values to the server without a full-postback, I believe you've these options:
Callback API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178208.aspx
Page methods, update panels: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163480.aspx
Anyway, let me give you an advise: ASP.NET works quite different compared to PHP and you'd not try to reproduce some known PHP solutions in ASP.NET. You need to change your mind.
About showing a DIV or anything while something is processed, play with initializeRequest ASP.NET AJAX PageRequestManager:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397460.aspx
But that would depend on what AJAX API you're using, because since Microsoft AJAX will be replaced by jQuery in the next times, I'll need to say that you need to do that in some jQuery approach, like creating some $.ajax wrapper so your code will be able to listen when an asynchronous request is going to be made and you can perform actions by handling that situation like showing a DIV or any loading notice.

In ASP.NET Webforms formposts aren't as easy as they are in php. If you're new in ASP.NET development try http://www.asp.net/mvc. A common framework which allows you to implement TypedViews (ViewModes), simple request to modelbinding, and so on...
mh, sample:
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult Insert(string name, string vorname) // name&vorname filled by $_POST:)
{
var #new = new Person { Name = name, Vorname = vorname }
this.repo.Insert(#new);
return this.Json(new { success = true, newId = #new.Id });
}

How can I set a variable in my pages javascript based on my controller action in ASP.NET MVC?

So, I have a page that looks like the following:
alt text http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/5973/croppercapture3.png
This is my basic messaging inbox. I have 2 pages right now, Inbox and Sent (there will eventually be others). These both share the same View, and just have 2 different actions to populate the appropriate data.
The elements on the right-hand side (the message list) is a partial view which has its data populated based on my two controller actions Inbox(int? page) and Sent(int? Page).
So, I have one view "MessageView" and one partial view "MessageList" shared between Inbox/Sent.
However, I now have to get those arrow buttons ("<" ">") working using Ajax. I know how to use jQueries ajax calls well enough, and I know how to render the result of the action call (which returns a partial view).
The problem comes from the fact that the javascript that makes these pagination ajax calls needs to know two things:
What the current page is (whether it be /messages/inbox or /messages/sent)
What the current page is (specified in the query string, ie /messages/inbox?page=2).
Without knowing which page I'm on (Inbox or Sent), it wont know which url to make the ajax call on. Should it make the postback to /messages/inbox or to /messages/sent?
If I wasn't making these messages load with Ajax it would be as simple as loading the appropriate url into the link tags for the "<" and the ">" buttons. But I can't, because part of my requirements states that it must load the messages below without visibly refreshing to a new page.

In JavaScript you can check window.location.pathname to see the pathname section of the current’s page’s URL.
window.location.search gives you the query string.

When the user clicks the Inbox or Sent buttons, you need to rewrite the URLs in your arrows so that they point to the right place.

Navigating between DotNetNuke module controls using EditURL() or NavigateURL()

OK I'm new to DotNetNuke and need to write a simple module in DNN that will display an article for everyone, and allow the admin to edit the article/add a new one.
I have a test page that contains a DNN module with one module definition and two controls in that definition. The default control shows the article based on an articleID field in the querystring. You then click a button that is supposed to load the edit control and pass the articleID in the query string.
If I use EditURL() in the onClick the edit control is loaded with the correct articleID, but using the admin skin. If I use Globals.NavigateURL() then the correct skin is shown but my edit control isn't loading in the page.
Any clue as to how to what I'm doing wrong or how to get the edit control loading with the correct skin?
My two methods of switching to the edit control (in my button click event) are listed below:
string newURL = this.EditUrl("articleID", Request.QueryString["articleID"], "EditArticle");
Response.Redirect(newURL);
and
string newURL = Globals.NavigateURL(this.TabId, "EditArticle","articleID="+Request.QueryString["articleID"]);
Response.Redirect(newURL);

Actually you are doing this correctly - the editurl in DNN does load the Admin skin - usually this skin is based on someone administering content so it strips out all other modules and shows the 'basics'. Right or wrong this is what it does.
If you dont want to to do that you could provide a switch in the querystring and show a seperate panel or do a multiview control and show different views based on the switch in the query string.
There are a few other approaches like changing the content area to editing text area with ajax or using popup modal style windows.