I just came across a nice feature in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 (currently in Beta) that I didn’t realize was included. It’s always nice to discover hidden gems from time to time. With ASP.NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.5 applications if a user or JavaScript function tried to do a postback before all of the ViewState and EventValidation data was loaded in the browser, a ViewState MAC validation error could be raised by the server.
In ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 Microsoft provides a new attribute on the <pages> element in web.config that now allows all hidden fields to be rendered at the top of a form rather than at the bottom which can help to avoid the ViewState MAC validation error when people perform a postback operation before the page has finished loading. The attribute is named renderAllHiddenFieldsAtTopOfForm (which does what it says) and defaults to a value of true. .NET 3.5 SP1 is currently in beta but once it’s officially released the new attribute is definitely a nice enhancement to the ASP.NET framework.
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