How to make user controls know about css classes in ASP.NET

Serhat Ozgel picture Serhat Ozgel · Aug 29, 2008 · Viewed 58k times · Source

Since there are no header sections for user controls in asp.net, user controls have no way of knowing about stylesheet files. So css classes in the user controls are not recognized by visual studio and produces warnings. How can I make a user control know that it will relate to a css class, so if it is warning me about a non-existing css class, it means that the class really do not exist?

Edit: Or should I go for a different design like exposing css classes as properties like "HeaderStyle-CssClass" of GridView?

Answer

Adam Lassek picture Adam Lassek · Aug 29, 2008

Here's what I did:

<link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="Stylesheet.css" id="style" runat="server" visible="false" />

It fools Visual Studio into thinking you've added a stylesheet to the page but it doesn't get rendered.


Here's an even more concise way to do this with multiple references;

<% if (false) { %>
    <link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="Stylesheet.css" />
    <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.2.6.js" />
<% } %>

As seen in this blog post from Phil Haack.