Real World SharePoint® 2007: Indispensable Experiences from 16 MOSS and WSS MVPs

Chapter 7. Understanding Web Parts

by Jan Tielens

Web Parts are the building blocks of pages in SharePoint sites. Users of SharePoint sites can make use of those building blocks to determine what should be displayed on a specific page in a particular SharePoint site.

When you install SharePoint, you can make use of some out-of-the-box Web Parts straight away. Depending on whether you have Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) as your SharePoint installation, you'll have more or less. Additionally, every SharePoint list and document library will have a Web Part counterpart that can display the contents of the corresponding list or document library.

Of course, the out-of-the-box Web Parts are not the only ones that you can use! Developers can build their own Web Parts as well and deploy them to the SharePoint server. End users won't notice the difference between the custom Web Parts and the out-of-the-box Web Parts, so Web Parts are a great way to extend SharePoint.

This chapter takes you through the basic steps to create your own Web Parts in various ways, and discusses some more advanced Web Part topics as well.

Note

The techniques and technologies described in this chapter are applicable both to Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), unless mentioned otherwise. So, in this chapter, when SharePoint is mentioned, it should be interpreted as Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server ...