Getting Value From Editor during an ajax postback

Hi, I would like to do an autosave feature similar to gmail, so I created an ajax timer that postsback every x seconds. I'm using asp.net, for those familiar it looks like this:

         <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" ID="up1"><ContentTemplate>    <asp:Timer Enabled="true" EnableViewState="true" ID="TimerAutoSave" OnTick="TimerAutoSaveTick" Interval="10000" runat="server" />                
                <asp:UpdateProgress runat="server" AssociatedUpdatePanelID="" DisplayAfter="25" ID="uprog1" >
                <ProgressTemplate>
                <asp:Label ID="Label3" runat="server" style="float:right;" BackColor="orange" ForeColor="white" Text="Autosaving draft..."></asp:Label>
                </ProgressTemplate>
                </asp:UpdateProgress>
        </ContentTemplate></asp:UpdatePanel>  

The problem I am having is that when I try to retrieve the text from my Editor during this postback, it does not detect any changes to the textarea that have been made. ie:

public void TimerAutoSaveTick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    { string ArticleIntro = ArticleIntroTextBox.Value;  }

Does not work correctly. Does anyone have any experience with this/know how to load the text from the editor during an ajax postback?