Comments on: Web standards with ASP.NET

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:07:36 +0000

This is exactly what kept me from jumping into ASP.NET; I’d like to see more info on how to write good ASP.NET code.

By: Alan Cyment

Alan Cyment — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:05:05 +0000

You might want to give Aggiorno a try next time you want to try and make an ASP.NET site standard. It can make an entire site XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant with a few clicks, including a wizard that will take you over all the images that lack an ALT description and a very very smart tag closing agent. It’s currently in beta phase and beta is not time limited in any sense, so you might as well get a decent version for free: http://www.aggiorno.com/download.aspx

Cheers,
Alan

By: Anna Kolesnik

Anna Kolesnik — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:56:27 +0000

I like to follow standards. I’m using all w3c validators from strict markup to link checkers, and I’m always glad to find something new ..
thank you

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:24:59 +0000

@Martin S, buckley: Great comments! I really need to expand the comments area, you are adding invaluable data to my posts :)

By: buckley

buckley — Sat, 17 May 2008 23:54:52 +0000

http://www.west-wind.com/WebLog/posts/127340.aspx

“Maybe the most important feature of this control is that like the Repeater control it provides much more control over the rendering process at the cost of more markup code in the page.”

By: Martin S.

Martin S. — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:19:58 +0000

Indeed a good blog post. I agree with most of the stuff written here. A lot of things can be written on this subject, but I narrow it down to some more tips:

- CSS adapters for better semantics: http://www.asp.net/CssAdapters/

- How to control adapters: http://www.singingeels.com/Articles/How_To_Control_Adapters.aspx

Btw, use Literal instead of Label when you need to output text from codebehind, unless it should be - then you can use the AssociatedControlId attribute. And PlaceHolder is always better than a Panel. The Panel creates a wrapping div, which PlaceHolder does not.

By: Emil Stenström

Emil Stenström — Sat, 17 May 2008 12:59:05 +0000

@Nick Dunn: Great comment Nick! The only reason I don’t like asp:label is because it really isn’t needed. Writing a label by hand is just as easy, even though you have to get the ClientID of the control then for the for attribute.

The same with asp:literal, you could use <%= text %> instead if you wanted.

No matter what, I don’t think that distinction is too important. As long as you know what you’re doing and care about the HTML.

By: Nick Dunn

Nick Dunn — Sat, 17 May 2008 12:38:55 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments here. I’ll add a few more points:

- Set the xHtmlConformanceMode to “strict” in the Web.config. This way, even if you do use server controls which generate a lot of HTML, it will at least be valid.

- Don’t write off the ASP:Label control. It’s main purpose is for form labels and it achieves this very well. Using an ASP:Label and ASP:TextBox pair will generate the same HTML markup I would write by hand anyway (except the auto-generated ID/name attributes).

The ASP:Label control becomes confusing when no AssociatedControlId is set, as it outputs a SPAN rather than a LABEL to the HTML.

The two most powerful server controls for the standards-aware developer are the ASP:Repeater (as you mentioned) and the ASP:Literal. The latter is simply an empty placeholder into which you can stuff any text or HTML.

Avoid the Validation server controls like the plague, if you care about markup. Adding a validator will add an onsubmit() handler to your form, and force the client to download a ton of JavaScript.

ASP.NET is incredibly powerful and indeed web-standards compliant. But only in the right hands :-)