As I am new to DNN and Web Development in general, please allow to apologize up front for any questions or statements that seem disjointed/uninformed/confusing.

I am beginning to build a module, and have questions regarding the approach to use for the UI.  As I see it, my module, which deals with creating, maintaining, and reporting against organizational units (not quite a standard orgchart), has two potential approaches for handling the UI

1.       My view.ascx is broken into 2 divs: one containing buttons marked to carry out tasks (new unit, report on unit, reassign hierarchy, that sort of thing), the other containing a series of container controls that have collections of controls appropriate to each task.  On button-click, the visible container would be made invisible, and the appropriate container made visible

2.       My view.ascx contains buttons (really just <a class=’dnnPrimaryAction’> type links which look like buttons…) which would call out other ascx controls (configured to be used as modal popups) where the appropriate work would be done.  As an example, think about the Edit Profile button on the user profile page, or the Admin button in the Forum module.  When clicked, it redirects to another page (although it’s really another ascx within the same module, isn’t it?), though in my case the page would just be a modal popup. 

I am under the [perhaps mistaken] impression that 2 would have a cleaner look and feel, but that 1 might be easier to accomplish.

I had thought that I could link the “other page” ascx as the link target, but I realized right off that wouldn’t work.  It looks like you have to contruct a url containing the TabID, among other things, and I’m not really sure how to determine what goes into that URL, and what the ultimate target should actually be.  I see a lot of things pointing to Default.aspx, but is that always going to be the case? 

So really, which of the two approaches is sensible (for starters), and are there any articles in the wiki that would help accomplish either task?  My first couple of searches didn’t turn anything up, but I suspect this is more a problem with my search terms more than anything else.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.