c# - Controls versus standard HTML

Question

I'm getting into ASP.NET (C# - I know it doesn't matter for this particular question, but full disclosure and all that), and while I love that the asp:-style controls save me a lot of tedious HTML-crafting, I am often frustrated with certain behaviors. I encountered one last night when working with Master Pages: my <asp:BulletedList ID="nav">, when converted into HTML, became <ul id="ct100_nav">.

There are other issues--I noticed that when you auto-populate a DataGrid, it adds attributes to the resulting table that I don't necessarily want there.

I know that there is a certain amount of "convention over configuration" that you have to accept when you rely on a framework to take over some of your tedious duties, but the "conventions" in these cases aren't so much any established conventions, but rather unnecessary extras. I know why the ID adds the prefix, but I should be able to tweak and turn things like this off, especially since, as a bit of a web standards evangelist, I don't duplicated HTML id's in a single page anyway.

So the question here is for those ASP.NET devs more seasoned than I: in your experiences in developing and deploying apps, how do you leverage these controls? Do you find yourself resorting back to hard-coded HTML? Do you use a blend? I don't want to design my HTML around idiosyncratic quirks in these controls, but, if possible, I'd like to leverage them when possible.

What's a boy to do?

Answer 1

Personally,

I think the standard ASP.NET controls are fine for inhouse stuff - quick and dirty is good in that scenario. But, I once worked with a web developer who was also a designer and he refused to use the ASP.NET controls and only code in HTML and add runat="server" tags when needed. This was more because he wanted to know exactly how his HTML was going to be rendered, and at the time anyway, some of the ASP.NET controls wouldn't render to standards compliance.

I sit somewhere in the middle - use HTML where appropriate and not when not. You can sort of best of both worlds with the CSS control Adapters