asp.net mvc 2 - Are <%: and <%= the same thing as embbed code (expression) blocks

Question

Having just started with MVC 2 I notice that in their starter template they use

<%: Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%>

and I was sure that in MVC 1 it was

<%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%>

Are they the same thing? If so, why the change from equal sign to colon.

Answer 1

the colon syntax means you'll be html encoded automatically: http://haacked.com/archive/2009/09/25/html-encoding-code-nuggets.aspx

They couldn't just html encode all the existing <%= blocks, because things that are already properly encoded (which is hopefully most of the projects out there) would look strange.