Modifying the behaviors of HTML helper methods such as ActionLink is a pain and requires quite a bit of code. Sometimes, however, you get lucky and are able to avoid it. What follows is once such case.
Here is one quick way that you can use to render an icon as a link in ASP .NET MVC.
First, create a CSS style for the icon:
.print-icon { background: url("/assets/print-icon.png"); }
Next, use it when generating the link:
@Html.ActionLink(" ", "Action", new { id = /* blah */ }, new { @class = "print-icon" }
And, that does it!
Cheers!
