Why doesn't a LinkButton work with a table as it's content?

Question

Using ASP.NET 3.5, you can create a LinkButton then define content inside of it. It works fine if I have div tags or any kind of text or anything, but if I use a table the click doesn't actually post back for some reason. This should take you to google (you'll get an error there but it should still go) for instance:

<asp:LinkButton ID="lbTest" PostBackUrl="http://www.google.com" runat="server">
            <table>
                <tr>
                    <td>Test</td>
                    <td>col2</td>
                    <td>col3</td>
                </tr>
            </table>
        </asp:LinkButton>

I could work around it by building a "table" with divs I guess, but I hate formatting with divs.

Answer 1

You can't do what you are trying to do because the table tag will not let the a tags be clickable even though they look like they are. I don't think this is a valid use of the a tag.

You can get around this my adding a client side onclick to the table and then manually do the redirect using javascript.

Also, why are you using a LinkButton versus a regular a tag? I assume you want to link back to something in your app. If so you will need to generate the __DoPostBack call as well in your javascript to mimic the LinkButton behavior. To do so use the following code to generate the correct javascript:

string javascriptToDoPostBack = Page.GetPostBackEventReference(yourLinkButton);