Are ASP.Net control identifiers for SEO and page size?

Question

ASP.Net controls (e.g. asp: Label) generate html random identifiers (e.g. ct100_ct100_Yabba_Dabba_Doo_FinallyTheRealId). Yes, they are ugly, but someone told me today that they also:

• SEO unfriendly
• increase page size

I half believe 1) and half don't believe. I know that certain names of names (for example, "title") are keywords that search engines will use to generate meta-information, but I am more skeptical that the range with id = "author" really affects SEO. I agree to admit that I am wrong.

At point 2), I'm at least 90% skeptical. Most of the page size is not html characters, and I really wonder if 100 longer 1kb identifiers will add to the page size.

I can go with one of two approaches. Which approach would you take?

Approach 1)

<asp:Label id="lblAuthor" runat="server"></asp:Label>

with code for

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   lblAuthor.Text = "Superman";

or Approach 2)

<span id="author"><%# Eval("Author") %></span>

with code for

public string Author { get; private set; }
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
       Author = "Superman";

On the one hand, 1) does not generate unpleasant identifiers. On the other hand, I always hated untyped strings in asp.net web forms and avoided them whenever I could. Also, if the page contains 30 elements, I get 30 page properties, which makes me feel awkward. (Side note: reason to love how the model works in the MVC pattern).

We work in .Net 3.5.

What are your thoughts?

Thank.

Answer 1

3)

<span id="author"><asp:Literal id="author" runat="server" /></span>

:

author.Text = "Dr. Seuss";

asp:Literal - , , , , ; , .

Answer 2

3)

<span id="author"><asp:Literal id="litAuthor" runat="server" /></span>

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   litAuthor.Text = "Superman";
}

. , ;)

Answer 3

SEO: No

Page Size - SURE. I mean that the strings are longer, so they take up more space, so the page size grows longer.

Update .NET 4.0, then you can override the identifier with stable short identifiers.