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asp.netvisual-studiovisual-studio-2010localizationglobalization

What's the purpose of an asp:hyperlink, and how many strings is too many in a resource file?

I developed a (small) company website in Visual Studio, and I'm addicted to learning more. I really just have two simple questions that I can't google.

1 - Asp:hyperlinks:

What is the purpose of an asp.hyperlink? I know I can't use these in my resource files -- I have to convert 'em all back to html links. At first, asp:hyperlinks looked sophisticated, so I made all my links asp:hyperlinks. Now I'm reverting back. What's the purpose of an asp:hyperlink, if any?

2 - Resource Files and strings:

In localizing my website, I have found that I'm putting the .master resource files in the directory's App_LocalResources folder VS created, because you can't change the top line stuff in a .master file and put a culture/uiculture in there. But all of my regular .aspx pages are going into the root App_GlobalResources folder into 1 of 4 language resource files (de, es-mx, fr, en). I'm making 2 or 3 strings per .aspx page. So when you have 47 pages in your website, that's about 100 strings on a resource page.

I just learned about all of the resources stuff from this forum and MSDN tutorials, so I have to ask, 'cause it's a lot of work. Is this okay? Is it normal? Am I going about this the wrong way?

Solution

  • I've never used resources, so can't comment on that.

    Differences between asp:hyperlink and a tag that I know of:

    1. asp:hyperlink is converted to an A tag by the ASP.NET engine when output to the browser.

    2. It is possible asp:hyperlink could make browser specific adjustments, to overcome browser bugs/etc.. which is kind of the point of ASP.NET, or at least one of them. If not already in it, they could be added later, and by using those objects you'll get that when/if added.

    3. Both can be used in code behind (you can set runat="server" for an A tag), but the asp:hyperlink has better compile-time checking in most cases -- strong type-casting for more items vs generic objects.

    4. asp:hyperlinks are easier to get HTML bloat, but only if used with a poor design. For example, it is easy to set font styles and colors on them.. but I wouldn't, since that generates in-line styles that are usually pretty bloated compared to what you would do by hand or in a CSS file.

    5. asp:hyperlinks support the "~/Folder/File.ext" syntax for the TargetUrl (href), which is nice in some projects if you use a lot of different URLs and sub-folders and want the server to handle mapping in a "smart" way.