ASP.NET 2.0 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Building Portals with Web Parts

In This Chapter

✓	Surveying the features of portal sites
✓	Creating Web parts that users can move around the page
✓	Sharing data between Web parts
✓	Displaying Web parts in a catalog

Web portals are hot items in the enterprise, changing the way people do business. They’re the concept of one-stop shopping brought to the computer desktop. The same goes for consumer sites where portals are moneymakers because they attract people and increase advertising revenue.

Customization is a big attraction in these browser-based gateways. People like to organize portal pages to suit their style. Preferences include the tools and items they see, where features sit on the page, and the overall appearance of the site. Let’s not underestimate the fun part of portals. Just as kids like to play with their food, adults like to tinker with their portal setups.

Web parts are pluggable modules that you drop into a portal page. Microsoft first introduced Web parts in its SharePoint Portal technology. While highly functional for end-users, the first SharePoint Web parts were time-consuming to build because there was no graphical development environment. All that changed with ASP.NET 2.0, where Web parts are no longer exclusive to SharePoint. What’s more, Microsoft integrated Web-part development into its mainstream designer tools; anyone can create a Web part.

In this chapter you get an overview of portals and the features that make them attractive to users. Then, we explore ...