Web Client Software Factory 2.0 Released

Finally Microsoft Pattern & Practices Web Client Software Factory 2.0 released! Read about it here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264518.aspx

Dynamic Rendering of META Description HTML tag

For today's search engine optimized web sites having relevant content of the META Description HTML tag on a page is a must. It plays a significant role together with the page title in determining a page relevance ranking in regards to search keywords.

So it becomes necessary to generate a content of the META Description dynamically based on a page content. ASP.NET already provides an easy access to the page TITLE tag allowing to populate it with relevant text simply using a Page.Title property.

Unfortunately it's not the same easy and obvious how to access the META Description from the server-side code.

Luckily ASP.NET is flexible enough and the solution is easy. Simply add a META tag to your page and turn it into a server tag by adding an id and a runat="server" attributes like the following:

<meta name="description" content="your description" runat="server" id="Description" />

Immediately you'll be able to access the content from the code behind by using a Description.Content property.

The explanation is very simple, actually. When ASP.NET parses the mark-up it creates an HtmlMeta server control with the name "Description" that has a Content property of a string type. And, of course, you can employ the same technique if you want to manipulate with other META tags on the page. Just use the proper value of a "name" attribute.