Chapter 1
introduces portals and defines what an application needs in order to be
considered a portal. The author wastes no time in building a simple
example--by page 15, you have a very simple portal created with a single page
and two web parts. Obviously, there is still much work to be done and the rest
of the chapter focuses on setting up the Adventure Works Cycles database to fit
the needs of the example.
Chapter 2
explores the internals of the web part class, including customization of the
appearance and functionality, and ends up adding web parts to the solution.
Some understanding of interfaces would be useful in this chapter.
Chapter 3 looks
at how to connect web parts to each other. Communication between web parts
adds a great amount of functionality to a portal, especially when there is a
parent/child relationship to the data. Connections can be static or dynamic
and data can be transformed in the connection for additional flexibility.
Chapter 4
explores the Web Part Manager, which is an essential page-level control for
managing web parts. Rather than focusing on web parts, the author looks at how
to display and authorize web parts and how to use master pages as well.
In addition to
the Web Part Manager, portal Web Part Zones are essential for a portal's
function. Zones are literally the areas where web parts are displayed and
control the appearance using WebPartChrome. If you are familiar with
SharePoint, you have probably been exposed to Web Part Zones. Indeed, some of
the examples in this chapter are from SharePoint.
Chapter 6 takes
us into something more fun--personalization. Personalization is what makes
your portal useful and perhaps fun for your users. Fortunately, the ASP.NET
Web Part controls remove most of the burden of building such functionality. To
make life even simpler, web parts use the PersonalizationProvider class, which
you may have been exposed to in other projects. This chapter includes an
overview of the personalization provider, as well as, how to set it up in the
sample solution.
Chapter 7 begins
Part 2, where more advanced functionality is covered. In this chapter we are
led through custom editing options for web parts and enhancing the included
editor control. Examples go deep into controlling the appearance and
functionality of editor controls to make them easy for your users.
Chapter 8 takes the
basic functions of a portal and makes them more accessible or easier to use.
The author demonstrates how to build a menu bar for common tasks, retain
previous versions of user data for rollbacks and use dynamically displayed
zones to hold tools or catalogs of data.
Chapter 9 makes
ready for the big time and covers preparing for deployment, monitoring of the
health of the application using classes in the .NET framework and recovering
from errors gracefully (in a section named "When All Else Fails")
after you have deployed. Users can be enabled to reset their personalization
data and remove broken web parts.
Finally, Chapter
10 looks back on the portal you have built and looks at other portals in action
(such as SharePoint and live.com). With an eye toward the future, we are shown
how AJAX/Atlas can be used with out portal and it wraps up with an overview of
live.com, Microsoft's new "mega-portal." Looking at other portals
really gives you an idea of what is possible in the world of portals and what
you can strive for with yours.
