Why does Intellisense not work when using render blocks on an HTML attibute with double quotes?

Question

When I try to write code like the following source code, Visual Studio doesn't show any Intellisense for current context. Moreover, it tells me that another "<% %>" brackets is incorrect.

<div>
    <input type="checkbox" title="<%= LogOnView.RememberMe_ToolTip %>" />
</div>

How to solve this problem by patch or VSPackage(if you have some source code for modify existing Intellisense, I will add your source code to my VS Package)?

PS. I'm using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 with .NET 3.5 SP1

Answer 1

I think it needs a hint to process that in ASP.NET.

Try using

<div runat="server">
    <input type="checkbox" title="<%= LogOnView.RememberMe_ToolTip  %>" runat="server"/>
</div>

Alternatively, you can do it in .NET with (might need a <%@Register%> at the top though):

<asp:Panel runat="server">
   <asp:CheckBox runat="server" ToolTip="<%= LogOnView.RememberMe_ToolTip %>"/>
</asp:Panel>

Answer 2

This is just a shortcoming in the Visual Studio HTML designer component. If you pull the code block outside of the attribute it works great, once you put <%= %> in the attribute it no longer gives you proper IntelliSense in that block. I've even had this within a style="<%= %>" attribute go totally haywire and won't even get the syntax color correct (tries to parse it as CSS).

My theory is that the parser is in the context of that tag and attribute so it is trying to interpret what you are doing as values of that attribute. For instance, when you type the open quote of the type=" it knows to show you a list of common values for that tag. If you try to invoke IntelliSense in the middle of type="<%= %>", it will show you that same list of values which is not what you would expect in this code block context.

I experience this same exact issue when using the Visual Studio syntax coloring for editing JBST client-side templates. The markup is identical but the syntax coloring freaks out every so often.

I'm betting that there isn't a fix for it as it is pretty core to the designer. Best bet is to wait for a future release. I haven't tried this in Visual Studio 2010 to see if they've fixed it.

Answer 3

I just installed Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 and it doesn't work in this version either. I really hope they fix this before the final release.