The Rob blog

When I implemented an anti-cache function for my website i discovered that ASP.NET somehow parses <link> tags and makes it impossible to add parameters to the url.

I pass an version number to the url so that I can force new loads of the js and CSS, like this:

    <script src="/script/portal.js?v=<%=ScriptVersion%>" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <link href="/css/portal.css?v=<%=ScriptVersion%>" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <!-- does not work -->

Somehow ASP.NET parse the <link> tag and create this ugly code:

    <link href="/css/portal.css?v=&lt;%=ScriptVersion%&gt;" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <!-- does not work -->

The only solution for this was to include CSS like this;

    <style type="text/css" media="screen">
         @import "/css/portal.css?v=<%=ScriptVersion%>";
    </style>

JavaScript includes works perfect, it's just the css links that is parsed :/