do I need to worry about asp .net and all this encoded code?

[Craig_F]

my developers say in certain situations there's no way around using this hidden field:

<input type="hidden" value="dDwtMTA2MjA4Mzk2OTt0PDtsPGk8MD47aTwxPjs+O2w8dDxwPGw8VGV4dDs+==">

Doesn't look too bad there, but that's just a small sample sometimes this goes on and on for half the page of code.

Since there can be so much I worried about it affecting SE indexing, do I need to be concerned? If so, is there a way around doing it this way?

[txbakers]

That is how ASP.NET maintains Session information. Don't mess with it.

[Craig_F]

ok, but any idea how the search engines handle all that? seems like it would hamper indexing, no?

[txbakers]

no

[TheNige]

That is the ViewState field. It maintains the state of all the controls marked as "runat=server" on the aspx page. You can make it smaller by either disabling viewstate for the entire page, or for those specific controls that do not need their state maintained between postbacks.

Search engines should be smart enough to ignore the field but if you are really worried about it there have been some that have created custome controls that will store the complete viewstate in a database table instead of in a hidden field, there for making the page size smaller.

[fperkins]

You can turn off viewstate for the entire application [not a good idea] or on a per page basis using the page directive tag.

Even if you totally disable viewstate, .net will *still* show a little bit of viewstate on the page!

So to answer your question, there probably is no way to totally eliminate viewstate, but you can sure minimize it.