Hello to all,
sure Scott, it's just 6 keystrokes... but what about: Type 'Space + R' and after hitting enter... voila! your runat="server" in just 2 keystrokes.
Indeed, it is not a matter of how many keystrokes do we have to make. As you and others said, the real reason it is that the IDE should be enough smart how to guess that a control located under the System.Web.UI.WebControls will use this attribute and should be added automatically - as already does using drag & drop - . Another option, would be set by default the runat equals to 'server' in all this controls. The developer could change this by setting runat="false" or runatserver="false", etc......
Regards
VB .Net Coder - Apologize my C# nescience
Best Regards.