Chapter 12. Web Parts

Some of the Web sites that we deal with on the Internet are quite rigid in their presentation and present the same view to all users that come to the site. On the other hand, sometimes you are going to want to provide your end users with a site that allows for a high degree of customization by the end user. In some cases, you are going to want to provide the end users with a design surface or canvas so that they can design their own view of the information or service that you are providing.

The concept of a page component or Web Part has been around for some time. Web Parts are something that you can build with ASP.NET 3.5 applications (ever since ASP.NET 2.0), and it is something that is a part of the Microsoft SharePoint world. With Web Parts available to put together your pages, the next question is how you can incorporate AJAX and the capabilities the ASP.NET AJAX Library provides into the Web Parts that you build. This chapter will take a look at the possibilities.