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Javascript render (visitors) and html render (bots). Is legal? SEO

I have an aspx application.
In every GET the server respond with a "basic" html containing everything except table grids.
This "grid information" is contained in a input type hidden (json format) in the page.
This is by design and cannot be changed.
A normal visitor wil see the page HTML:
head, body, scripts, meta tags
text, labels, inputs...
<div id='gridcontainer'></div>
more html
more html
Then onpage load I render dynamically by using javascript a table inside div (gridcontainer).
So after onload event is executed, the user see also the table grid inside div.
In this situation google is not indexing the information in tabular grids, because it is rendered by javascript after page load.
The application has the ability to render the exact same content in HTML without using javascript (loosing some functionality). When I say the same exact content I really mean the same page (same content, same headers, same metatags, same title), but not being render by javascript.
The content length may be diferent if we compare both responses because HTML responses might be bigger than html + json + javascript.
This is what I want the spider to see:
head, body, scripts, meta tags
text, labels, inputs...
<div id='gridcontainer'>
<table> table row 1, table row2.....<table>
</div>
more html
more html
To sum up, I want to deliver the "HTML" version to spiders and the other (javascript rendered) to visitors.
Is this cloaking?
This may be dangerous to search engines or is a total legal method if the content I am displaying is totally the same (no tricks).
Thanks in advance!

If the content is basically the same and a human viewer would say that it's the same content, then it's legal. I know of a fairly major site that does this with Google's blessing. Any site that has a page that is largely generated with client-side JS has to do something like this for Google to see anything useful. Since Google doesn't currently evaluate Javascript, there is no other choice for a page that use JS-generated HTML.
I don't know if there's a way to get Google's blessing to avoid any accidental penalty.
The important point is that the actual content of the page needs to be the same. The details of the formatting does not have to be identical.

Note: For legal advice, contact a lawyer.
Yes, this is 'cloaking'.
Yes, it's morally questionable.
But No, it isn't illegal. *(subject to the disclaimer at the top of this answer)
But either way don't do it, because Yes, Google will kill your rankings if they catch you trying to serve content to them which the user doesn't get to see.

If you use progressive enhancement you won't have any issues at all. What you would do is serve the HTML version so users who don't have JavaScript enabled can still see the content. Then add JavaScript that, when the page loads, removes the current HTML and adds the enhanced version of that same content. They key is that the content is the same, just the experience is different due to lack of JavaScript capabilities. This will never get you in trouble with the search engines and is great accessibility. Accessibility is one of the main tenants of SEO.

General questions about #! hashbang urls and am I using them correctly

I'm in the process of writing a website that includes a reasonably large gallery. First page of the gallery the user will be displayed a bunch of thumbnail images with a url of: website.com/gallery.php
When they click a thumbnail image, if javaScript is turned off it will follow the url in the href and go to a page called gallery.php?img=67. If javaScript is turned on the href click will not execute, instead it will perform an ajax request to display the larger image and some text about it. The url changes to gallery.php#!img=67. The back button will take you back to the thumbnails, pressing f5 will keep the big image displayed with the text. If someone copies the address with the #! and sends it to someone they will get the same image displayed (assuming the receiver has javaScript turned on).
My question is, have I sorted this out correctly for google to index the individual gallery pages? Will google index them twice, once with the ?img=67 and once with the #! and if so is that a bad thing? I'm using javaScript/Ajax to preload the larger images once the thumbnail page is loaded for speed. I've read a lot of backlash against using hasbang ajaxy things recently and wondering if you think can justify using it here?

Google will follow your links and index the ?img=67 pages, and will not index your #! pages, because it can't see those links. You can tell Google about those links by doing the following:
Add <meta name="fragment" content="!"> to the <head> of your document, and
Handle requests for /?_escaped_fragment_= by returning an "HTML Snapshot" of your page that has all your #! links in the <A> tags.
Also, to make the most of this feature, you should also handle requests for /?_escaped_fragment_=img=67 by returning an HTML snapshot page with the big image displayed. Remember, GoogleBot doesn't execute Javascript. Using the #! URL tells Google to retrieve an alternate version of the page (A version where #! has been replaced with ?_escaped_fragment_=) that should render without Javascript.

THe use of #! tags in URLs are in the news recently, with updates to a well known blog.
http://isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs has a good description of what they are best used for - and when they can be bad. I think your use in a gallery is quite valid.
In short, a URL like http://lifehacker.com/#!5753509/hello-world... is rewritten by Google, and other compatible web-spiders as http://lifehacker.com/?_escaped_fragment_=5753509/hello-world...
Google may index them twice, but you can also use the canonical meta-tag to ensure it knows what the 'official' copy is.

Possible solution (as suggested in http://isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs) is to use regular links and translate them to #! in the OnClick() event. This ensures that the site displays regular links and not the shitty #!.
It does mean extra work for the server though, since the server needs to support both versions (the Ajax version and the regular version), but I think it worth it.These #! are so ugly..

Google "Sitelinks" for a website with almost only dynamic content?

I have a classifieds website, and the index.html is just going to be a simle form, which uses javascript alot to populate drop lists etc...
I have a menu also, put into a div container, but is this enough?
I mean, I have no content in index.html (almost), but a search form, which submits to a search results page, where all the content is.
So I am worried google might not find suitable sitelinks for my site?
Anybody know if I need to add something to the links in the index.html, which google might use for sitelinks? title tags etc...?
Thanks

Instead of changing your site around you can just create a good sitemap.xml file. That is of course if you're using GET for transferring data to your processing page. I would create a dynamic sitemap.xml page that is based on the form data that your processing page can read.
http://sitemaps.org/
http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=133&page=37

Search Engine Index Javascript Tabs

I have a website that is 1 html file and uses javascript to hide tabbed pages.
The url gets rewritten with a # for the different pages to make them bookmark-able.
Is there a way to make the different pages show in search engine results? It would be good to have them show up as different pages there.
I have read the below doc, but I think that is just for dynamically generated ajax content, right?
http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/getting-started.html

I read the page mentioned by you. That is for Ajax site. In your case it is not Ajax.
Another point as Jeff B has mentioned is that the chance is high that Google will index all content for each trick you use. In that case it would be bad as Google will get duplicate content. It will be not very bad as all content are from your site only.
Search Engine questions like this are very tricky and difficult to answer as no one know the exact functioning of Search Engine.
In my thinking you either recreate your pages as Ajax and follow the points mentioned in article you got. Or
Use a link for each tag with param. like page1.php?cat1, page1.php?cat2, etc.
and that only load content related to specific tag at a time.
The second solution is no different than implementing different page for each tab, but it can be easier to update in your case! and also all content are still accessible by both person and search engine at a place. Slowly search engine will index your each page with parameter. Remember, It is generally said that Google does not index pages with parameter but it is not true. Google does not index page with variable or id kind of parameter only. They index each page with popular parameters if page content changes.
Still your question is tricky and my suggestion is what comes to me after thinking much about it.

The problem seems to be that even if the different pages were indexed, they would all index the same content. This is because according to your explanation all of the content (including hidden) exists at load time.
If your tabs are links, you simply need to put the href in the link. Google should follow this link, while javascript-enabled browsers will execute your tab-switching code and not follow the link (if you coded it right).
However, the problem of all content being indexed for all pages still remains.

Modify your system like this:
Every link that changes the content of the current tab should have
as href attribute a subpage that contains the content of the tab
intended to appear -> this will be cached by Search Engines.
Those links should have binded JS actions that changes the content
of the current tab and also denies the redirecting that should have
been done by what's in the "href" attribute -> this will be shown to
the user

Ajax entire page - display only one div and retain CSS and other header material?

A client wants a merch shop on their site, and has set one up. I could iFrame in the whole page to the merch page, but frankly the merch site is an eyesore, and their site has a very particular feel to it. So I'm considering using an AJAX GET to grab the whole page, then javascript to display only the div with the merchandise in it. However, there are a lot of javascript includes (etc) on the merch site that I'd need to make sure are still present for the div to work correctly.
Any feeling on if this would work or not? Would the displayed div take its stylesheet and scripts from the AJAX'd page? Can I put the div in an iframe instead?
Opinions?

It sounds like an ugly solution. Isn't it better to do this serverside instead, for example let a PHP script read in the page and to whatever magic it takes to display it?
Using AJAX to load entire pages is ugly for a couple of reasons, including:
It breaks the URLs (can be worked around but requires extra work)
It's hard for search engines to crawl your site
It breaks some GUI elements in the browser, such as loading visualisations

looks like you can use jquery load function http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/load