Question

I have a simple asp.net web page that contain a table with about 5 TR and each row have 2 TD .. in the page load I get user data ( 5 property ) and view them in this page the following are first 2 rows :

 <table>
    <tr>
        <td>
            FullName
        </td>
        <td>
            <span id="fullNameSpan" runat="server"></span>
        </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
        <td>
            Username
        </td>
        <td>
            <span id="userNameSpan" runat="server"></span>
        </td>
   </tr>
</table>

I always used <asp:Label to set value by code but i always notice that label converted in runtime to span so i decided to user span by making him runat=server to be accessed by code, so
Which is better to use asp:label or span with runat=server ??

Answer 1

The answer is: Whatever works best for you.

asp controls have a different object model from html controls. There is no databinding for html controls, for instance.

EDIT:

Something to consider is whether or not you need a span element at all. Span is an html element used for inline items, and canoot hold ceratin kinds of other items (such as block items). If your html markup make sense to semantically include a span (such as you want to style the text in a specific way) then use it.

Unless you need to control attributes on the span tag, it would be better to do something like this though:

<span class="foo"><asp:Literal id="litFoo" runat="server" /></span>

You should only make an element runat=”server” if you need to specifically modify the tag itself (not necessarily just it’s contents). For instance, if you need to hide the span at runtime, then you make the span runat="server" so you can access it’s Visible property at runtime. Otherwise, it should be left as standard html.