10 Rules for effective use of CSS in ASP.NET
Becoming standards compliant, effective, and successful when using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) with ASP.NET is not always obvious, straightforward or easy. Here I am putting together a series of tips and best practices that can help you on the way.
- Always prefer CSS over ASP.NET’s Skins for the following reasons:
- CSS is a well accepted standard.
- Designers understand CSS but may not understand ASP.NET’s proprietary mechanisms.
- Skins lead to Classitis. Each skin creates an html class attribute that has its associated styles. This does not follow the principle of reuse.
- A well designed external CSS implementation will have a smaller payload and faster download times than its equivalent Skin implementation.
- Microsoft is heavily investing in tooling for CSS design (Expression Web and inclusion of the Expression Web engine in VS2008), and is really not doing anything more with Skins. So follow their lead. Going forward CSS will have the best tooling support from Microsoft.
- Use CSS within the Themes construct in ASP.NET in order to get all the good CSS support in VS2008. In particular, instead of linking to CSS files in the <head> section of your HTML document,
- Create one or more theme folders under the App_Themes folder.
- Put your CSS files inside these themes folders.
- Link to these themes by setting the Themes attribute in the page directive.
- When you drag a control from the toolbox onto your form, ASP.NET, depending on the control, may add inline styling to your control. Delete these inline styles in Code View, otherwise due to the specificity rules, they will override anything you set in the CSS files and you will be scratching your head trying to figure out what happened while trying to find out why the styles you specified are not applied.
- Furthermore, note that most ASP.NET controls have several formatting properties that can be set via the properties window or directly in the markup. All of these will end up becoming inline styles and should totally be avoided. The only formatting property that I recommend using (in moderation to avoid Classitis) is CssClass.
- CSS files are written against pure HTML elements not ASP.NET Server Controls. Therefore, understanding the mappings between the two is vital to writing quality CSS files and separating the structure (HTML) from the presentation (CSS). See the bottom of this post for the mappings.
- Understanding the mappings between ASP.NET web control and HTML types is is also vital for making sure that your site is following well established web design standards and guidelines. If you consider using an ASP.NET web control, you need to make sure that the corresponding HTML type was intended for that usage. For example, you can use a LinkButton to submit values to the server. However, the LinkButton converts to an <a href> element (along with some JavaScript that does the postback). The <a href> element is intended for hyperlink. The HTML 4.01 specification clearly states: “A link is a connection from one web resource to another.” To submit data to a server, it is better to use the Button control which converts to input type=”submit”. Why is following these standards important? For example, if we choose the LinkButton over the Button control, if the user has JavaScript turned off, the site will no longer function properly. Also following standards is probably the most important step to making your site accessible.
- Often times one has to choose between an ASP.NET Server Control and the corresponding HTML element. Here are some rules of thumb. For simple controls like a TextBox or a Label, if you need to map the control to ASP.NET server side functionality, or if you would like to take advantage of the ASP.NET validation controls, use ASP.NET controls. If you don’t, use the lighter html controls. Obviously sophisticated controls such as the Calendar Control can save you hours of development time since they have no equivalents in HTML. On the other end of the spectrum, do not forget that there are a good number of HTML elements that do not have (and should not have) ASP.NET counterparts. An example is <input type=”reset”>. Use these as necessary to do your work.
- Use the YUI Library CSS Tools. They will save you many hours of work. These tools consist of four style sheets that Yahoo uses for their own production websites. They include a reset style sheet that neutralizes browser specific styles, a base style sheet which creates a consistent style foundation for common HTML elements, a style sheet for setting and managing fonts, and a grid style sheet for managing grids. If you like, Yahoo will even host these sheets for you.
- Note that you can use ID selectors only with HTML elements. The ID you assign to an ASP.NET Control will most probably change as the HTML is rendered for the control. So for ASP.NET Controls, use the CssClass attribute to define the style. If the control does not have this attribute, wrap it in a <Div> tag. Wrapping in Div tags should be the last resort. Usually you can refactor your CSS by using contextual selectors on Div tags that wrap a group of elements.
- The designer behaviors in both VS2008 and Expression Web (note that they have the same engine so they work pretty much the same way) focus on styling ASP.NET controls using ID Selectors. This can easily be changed to class selectors. So for a complex ASP.NET web control you add the CssClass attribute with a value. Then, in the CSS file, you add details to it. The CSS designers help you set the CSS properties of the control itself, but to set the properties of individual elements in the control, you need to go in the CSS file and hand code. Remember two powerful CSS selectors, contextual selectors and attribute selectors. (Note that attribute selectors are not supported in IE6 or older browsers). Here is a simplified example:
<asp:RadioButtonList runat=”server” CssClass=”FunkyRadioButtonList”>
<asp:ListItem>first</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>second</asp:ListItem>
<asp:ListItem>third</asp:ListItem>
</asp:RadioButtonList>
.FunkyRadioButtonList
{
/* general styling for the container control goes here*/
}
.FunkyRadioButtonList input[type=”radio”]
{
/*styling specific radio buttons in the FunkyRadioButtonList goes here*/
}
The list below shows the ASP.NET Server control and the HTML element that is generated from it by the ASP.NET runtime.
| ASP.NET Control | HTML Element |
| Label | span |
| TextBox | input type=”text” |
| TextBox TextMode=”MultiLine” | textarea |
| TextBox TextMode=”Password” | input type=”password” |
| Button | input type=”submit” |
| LinkButton | a href=”javascript:__doPostBack(‘LinkButton1’,”)” |
| ImageButton | input type=”image” |
| HyperLink | a |
| DropDownList | select |
| ListBox | select size=”4″ gives you 4 rows |
| ListItem | option |
| CheckBox | input type=”checkbox” |
| RadioButton | input type=”radio” followed by a label for the text |
| RadioButtonList | table with a tr with one td for each radio button. Inside each td there is a input type=”radio” and a label |
| Image | img |
| ImageMap | img and a map tag holding one or more of the following 3: |
| CircleHotSpot | area shape=”circle” |
| PolygonHotSpot | area shape=”poly” |
| RectangleHotSpot | area shape=”rect” |
| Table | table |
| TableHeaderRow | tr |
| TableRow | tr |
| TableFooterRow | tr |
| TableHeaderCell | th |
| TableCell | td |
| BulletedList | ul with each list item: |
| ListItem | li |
| HiddenField | input type=”hidden” |
| Literal | Literal is not translated to any html element. The dynamic content returned by the methodname method is directly displayed. |
| Calendar | a rather sophisticated table |
| AdRotator | a |
| FileUpload | input type=”file” |
| Wizard | a rather sophisticated table. You can Convert the Wizard Control and related controls such as the CreatUserWizard control into templates, and then modify the html, remove the tables, and replace them with divs to make them CSS friendly. Even after all this, the wizard navigation buttons will still be unreachable via CSS. Therefore, I hand code these functionalities instead of relying on the Wizard for full control. |
| Xml | <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?> |
| MultiView | MultiView and all the Views inside of it are not translated to any html element. Thier content is directly displayed. |
| Panel | div |
| PlaceHolder | Placeholder is not translated to any html element. The controls added to it by the PlaceHolder1.Controls.Add() methodare directly displayed. |
| Substitution | Substitution is not translated to any html element. The dynamic content returned by the methodname method is directly displayed. |
| Localize | Localize is not translated to any html element. It’s content is directly displayed. |
| Validation controls | span |
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This is a great, great post. I hope more people start to code this way. Just a few additions:
The asp:Label control isn’t always rendered as a <span>. If the AssociatedControlID property is set, it’s rendered as a <label>, with the for attribute set.
The asp:RadioButtonList control isn’t always rendered as a <table>. It comes out as a <span> if RepeatLayout is set to Flow.
Also, a sidenote: I usually create a (very small) default skin for every project, and import it using the StyleSheetTheme property in web.config. I use it to add a default CssClass to commonly-used controls like asp:TextBox, asp:FileUpload, and asp:Button. This saves me the trouble of adding the same CssClass to the same controls over and over, but because I import with StyleSheetTheme instead of Theme, I can still override that default whenever it’s appropriate.
any info on how to use YUI theme inside an ASP.NET project? how to apply and get the power of javascript?
Labels don’t always render as spans. If you assign a value to their AssociatedControlID property they get rendered into html labels.
I prepend ASP.NET Labels with “lbl” or “for” depending on their purpose and generated counterpart to avoid confusion.
Just my 2 cents.
Excellent! Thanks for this contribution!
@Matt
Thank you too. Your solution appears to be the best of both worlds.
this is a awesome post. very good information for a css developer
One more important addition:
When you use a Panel, if you set the GroupingText, it adds a “fieldset” and a “legend” tag (As it assumes you want the panel to be a form.
Unfortunately, ASP.Net still renders the div (instead of only the fieldset), but it’s not the end of the world that we get an extra div.
its awasome for developers
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