样式化服务器控件生成的html

Question

Just starting to do web development in .NET. I apologize if this question is simplistic. If I have a server control perhaps:

<asp:LoginView ID="HeadLoginView" runat="server" EnableViewState="false">
                    <AnonymousTemplate>
                        <asp:LinkButton ID="header_su_btn" runat="server" CssClass="su_btn">Sign Up</asp:LinkButton><br />
                        <a href="~/Account/Login.aspx" ID="HeadLoginStatus" runat="server">Log In</a>
                    </AnonymousTemplate>
                    <LoggedInTemplate>
                        Welcome <span class="bold"><asp:LoginName ID="HeadLoginName" runat="server" /></span>!
                        [ <asp:LoginStatus ID="HeadLoginStatus" runat="server" LogoutAction="Redirect" LogoutText="Log Out" LogoutPageUrl="~/"/> ]
                    </LoggedInTemplate>
                </asp:LoginView>

Is there any way to go about styling the server control with inline styling or is the only way to specify the css class of the generated element and then do the styling in a seperate style sheet?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It will depend on what's the top-level (superclass) of the whole control. If it's WebControl , you'll be forced to define your CSS stylesheet in some file. In the other hand, if it's a HtmlGenericControl you would be able to add a style attribute with inline CSS styles:

<div style="color: #f0f0f0" runat="server" />

Anyway, I'm not sure if you're going in the right route if you want to style elements using style attribute in modern Web development. You should avoid that as soon as possible and get the job done right. A separate file is worth the effort.

Can you expand on why inline styles are bad?

Browser Wars: A new hope

In a galaxy, far far away, in the 20th century AC in the far Earth planet, it took place the Browser Wars . After some fights, where each other wanted to rule the Web , software vendors arrived to a great conclusion: we need to standarize Web development .

blah, blah, blah, blah

[...] Thus, they tried to fix Web development, and HTML would be the document definition/layout, CSS the style and JavaScript the code .

Summary: coding styles in HTML is mixing two different concepts. Document structure and the style, and this is why using style attribute is a bad practice .

It's still there because of backwards compatibility with old-days' (90s) Web pages.

TL;DR: Because separation of concerns is a good idea .