Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Chapter 11. Web Parts

Microsoft first introduced Web Parts in Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 2.0. Information workers and developers quickly adopted Web Parts because they enable end users to modify the content, appearance, and behavior of pages through a browser. Not only could users easily modify the content and experience with the browser, but they could also modify pages for just their own experience, rather everyone's shared experience. In addition, developers could create two Web Parts that could be connected and pass data back and forth. A common use of Web Part connections is the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Web Parts. One Web Part displayed a list of the available reports while the other took the selected report from the first Web Part and displayed the rendered report.

Web Parts became so popular that the ASP.NET team decided to add a Web Part Framework to ASP.NET 2.0. The ASP.NET 2.0 implementation is different from the WSS 2.0 implementation in that ASP.NET 2.0 adds a new component to the page: the WebPartManager. The WebPartManager control is responsible for managing all aspects of Web Parts on the page. It knows what Web Parts are allowed on the page, what Web Parts are already on the page and which Web Part zones they are in, any connections that have been established between two Web Parts, as well as the personalization data for each Web Part. Personalization data contains all the settings, or values, set on the public properties, for a Web Part. ...