Server control IDs in ASP.NET 4

The new version of ASP.NET will take care of an old problem, which is the id mangling of server controls. In short, your carefully named id could be rewritten into something like “ctl00_MainContent_” before rendered to the client.

Since this is an annoying issue for several reasons, the change is very welcome. 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 keep Web Forms at arm’s length, this is still something for all ASP.NET developers out there 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 like that they are moving in the right direction.