I don't think ts weird behaviour Mark.
It seems when you add controls programmatically they are added after the stuff
in the designer is rendered.
I made a project earlier - have look - it does the same thing
http://www.developer.com/webapplication123.zip
The designer and in-mem code are 2 different things - the designer is rendered
first when mixing them.
And ascx controls get rendered before their equivalent in-mem (see the above
project ... it's got most of it in there)
I don't thik it is designed to have them mixed, but it has that added
functionality.
I suppose the idea is that if you were to add controls programmatically then you
would get rid of all the html in the designer and add your own controls to
render a <html> and <head> and <body> tags yourself.
I'm quite happy getting rid of the html in designer and don't expect VS to be
perfect in every way, I don't even lik eth edesigner anymore - but luuuurrvvvvv
doing it all in code.