I have a solution with two projects in it. A portable areas project, and a web site that references the portable areas project, and Both reference MvcContrib.

The problem I am have is with the embedded resources, they are giving me a 404 error when I try to get to them. It seems like it's trying to access a physical path not the dll. The partial view works fine.

The file I'm trying to access looks like this inside my visual studio solution explorer

AdHocReporting/Areas/AdHocReportBuilder/Content/adhoc.css (the build action is embedded)

**Here is the routing for the portable area:**

```
using System.Web.Mvc;
using MvcContrib.PortableAreas;

namespace AdHocReporting.Areas.AdHocReportBuilder
{
    public class AdHocReportBuilderAreaRegistration : PortableAreaRegistration
    {
        public override string AreaName
        {
            get { return "AdHocReportBuilder"; }
        }

        public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context, IApplicationBus bus)
        {
            RegisterRoutes(context);
            RegisterAreaEmbeddedResources();

        }
        private void RegisterRoutes(AreaRegistrationContext context)
        {
            context.MapRoute(
              AreaName + "_content",
              base.AreaRoutePrefix + "/Content/{resourceName}",
              new { controller = "EmbeddedResource", action = "Index", resourcePath = "Content" },
              new[] { "MvcContrib.PortableAreas" }
          );

            context.MapRoute(
                AreaName + "_default",
                base.AreaRoutePrefix + "/{controller}/{action}/{id}",
                new { action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
            );
        }
    }
}

```

**Here is the Web sites Global.aspx that has the reference to the portable area**

```
namespace AdHocReportingSite
{
    public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication
    {
        public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
        {
            filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());
        }

        public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
        {
            routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");
            routes.MapRoute(
                "Default", // Route name
                "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
                new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
            );

        }
        protected void Application_Start()
        {
            AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();
            PortableAreaRegistration.RegisterEmbeddedViewEngine();
            FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
            RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
        }
    }
}

```

**here is an image of what my solution explore looks like:**

![Solution Explorer](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6P0TK.png)
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/14695580', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/937294/']
for me the simplest solution was to send a broadcast, in the activity oncreate i registered and defined the broadcast like this (updateUIReciver is defined as a class instance) :

```
 IntentFilter filter = new IntentFilter();

 filter.addAction("com.hello.action"); 

 updateUIReciver = new BroadcastReceiver() {

            @Override
            public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) {
                //UI update here

            }
        };
 registerReceiver(updateUIReciver,filter);

```

And from the service you send the intent like this:

```
Intent local = new Intent();

local.setAction("com.hello.action");

this.sendBroadcast(local);

```

don't forget to unregister the recover in the activity on destroy :

```
unregisterReceiver(updateUIReciver);

```
I would use a [bound service](http://developer.android.com/guide/components/bound-services.html) to do that and communicate with it by implementing a listener in my activity. So if your app implements myServiceListener, you can register it as a listener in your service after you have bound with it, call listener.onUpdateUI from your bound service and update your UI in there!