The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology

Chapter 4 Pushing the Boundaries of the GridView

The introduction of the GridView control in ASP.NET 2.0 basically sent the DataGrid control to the dustbin of ASP.NET history. While the DataGrid served us well in its time, the GridView is the table control of choice now, as it boasts more functionality and extensibility than its predecessor.

Of course, there are still many situations in which Repeater or DataList controls are appropriate, but when you need rich sorting and paging, the GridView is hard to beat.

In fact, we like the GridView so much that we’ve dedicated this whole chapter to accomplishing various non-trivial tasks with the GridView. However, some of these techniques can be used with any of the table controls. For example, ...