Question

I have a lot of code that I am reworking in which a single item is wrapped in a div block with a single linked cssstyle. There doesn’t seem to be any real difference between wrapping the .Net object in the div and applying the style with the “cssstyle” property. Is there any real difference?

<div class="grid_1">
      <asp:FormView ID="FormView8" runat="server" DataSourceID="odsInst">
           <ItemTemplate>
                <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton1" runat="server" ToolTip='<%# Eval("TestScoresPageNrStudents")%>'>(?)</asp:LinkButton>
           </ItemTemplate>
      </asp:FormView>
</div>

vs

<asp:FormView ID="FormView8" runat="server" DataSourceID="odsInst" CssClass="grid_1">
    <ItemTemplate>
        <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton1" runat="server" ToolTip='<%# Eval("TestScoresPageNrStudents")%>'>(?)</asp:LinkButton>
    </ItemTemplate>
</asp:FormView>

Answer 1

The difference would be in the first case, it would render:

<div class="grid_1">
    <table>...</table>
</div>

versus:

<table class="grid_1">...</table>

This would have an impact on how you would be able to design your css. My thought is that the first case (the <div>) would be preferable since it would gain more flexibility in designing your css classes — mainly, you would not be restricted to being solely within a table. Of course, if the grid_1 class is solely for styling tabular data, then the second case would be fine.