Server control IDs in ASP.NET 4

Previous versions of the ASP.NET framework have had an issue with id mangling in server controls, making your named id to be rewritten into something like “ctl00_MainContent_” before rendered by the client.

The latest version, ASP.NET 4, will take care of this problem. Scott Guthrie has now written a summary of the fix in Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms. Even if you don’t use the built-in controls at all and wisely stay away from Web Forms, this is still something for ASP.NET developers to be aware of.

Over two years ago I mentioned some of the problems with ASP.NET 1.1/2.0 in my post ASP.NET and standards compliancy. Some of those issues are unfortunately still in the framework, but I appreciate that the framework is moving in the right direction.