.NET and SEO

a whole lotta javascript going on...

[sean]

First, thanks to everyone who helped to launch this forum at the right place and the right time. This will no doubt be helpful as I evaluate .NET for an upcoming project. Currently, I am at ground zero, but one thing did catch my eye in a quick scan of .aspx pages...

superfluous javascript

Greg, this was going to be a stickymail in your direction, ye of eloquent <H2> rants on the role of JavaScript, but I perhaps this is part of a wider concern, so here it is in the open:

How much control does .NET allow over the output in areas that impact html-conscious search engines and security-conscious visitors? Can some of the "gee whiz" features be made to co-exist with "hey, googlebot" requirements?

[Xoc]

To do postbacks on random controls besides buttons, ASPX requires about 4 lines of JavaScript. For example, if you select an item out of a listbox and want it immediately to postback that selection. There are options to make all of the other stuff happen server-side. It's a traditional trade-off, though. The more work you do server-side, the more server intensive it is, and postbacks take time.

You can add all the usual JavaScript yourself, which I'll bet is most of what you are seeing.

My main gripe is that the code that the various server-side controls produce are HTML 4.0 not XHTML. How hard could it have been to put the HTML tags in lower case and have closing tags? I'm still looking at this for ways to fix it by subclassing or something.

[chris_f]

Xoc,

Download addons are avaliable to fix this problem. I'm afraid I don't where I came across them.

Chris.