A few tips based on my experience of working with ASP.NET 1.1: * First up, consider sticking to an HTML 4 DOCTYPE. It's really not as big a deal as some advocates would have you think ;-) - Critically, if you try and force it to use XHTML and someone accidentally clicks 'Design View' your code is ruined. VS2003 works in HTML, you'll have an easier path if you do too. As has been said, .NET 2 and Visual Studio 2005 introduces XHTML support, you really need to upgrade your development tools if you want to work with it.
* Avoid using the pre-wrapped ASP.NET controls. DataGrids aren't so bad, but you get much more mark-up control by using a Repeater. Similarly, rather than using an asp:label, there's a mark-upless version that doesn't insert <span> elements. I forget the name, sorry, but it does exist. * Don't use postback. Just give up, it's a badly implemented hack to maintain state in a webpage misusing forms and introducing complete JavaScript dependence. Just because Visual Studio makes it very easy to accidentally use it, doesn't make it ok. Just pretend it was never there. Also remember that you don't have to recompile when you make changes to an aspx file (only recompile for codebehind changes). It's probably insulting to be told that for some people, but when I started working with .NET last year I spent months not really understanding how the whole aspx thing worked in relation to compilation. Anyway, knock on effect is that once you've got something producing stable data, you can edit the page layout CSS and aspx components without recompiling, from any editor(s) you like and preview in whichever browsers you like. That's a huge help. I think that ultimately, it's all a case of learning to quirks of a very complex system. Once you trim off the cruft though, there's not much to go wrong! Good luck, Ben http://ben-ward.co.uk ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
