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Keep Writing SharePoint Web Parts Until (at least) 2006

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ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts rock.  We in SharePoint-land love them.  We’re building “v3” on ASP.NET 2.0.  But none of that matters right now if you have to deliver code for today’s SharePoint sites and portals.  And this advice comes from both me in WSS/SPS-land and the Whidbey Program Manager responsible for ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts.  Here’s the official word on Whidbey/WSS interoperability and compatibility:

  • WSS “v3” (and anything built on top of it like SPS) is being written with ASP.NET 2.0, and will use, natively, ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts.
  • WSS “v3” (and anything built on top of it like SPS) will carry forward the object models used for SharePoint Web Parts, so it will continue to run anything being written today.  Natively. Anything you write today will still work tomorrow.
  • ASP.NET 2.0–only sites that do not involve SharePoint technology will only run ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts.

Those are pretty much guarantees.  Now for clarification of a couple of things we’ve said in the past that have gotten distorted.

  • WSS “v2” (the currently-shipping version) won’t magically acquire the ability to host ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts when WSS Service Pack 2 ships.  WSS Service Pack 2’s date and fix list aren’t publicly sharable yet, with one exception:  WSS SP2 will allow WSS and the ASP.NET 2.0 runtime to coexist on the same machine.  And in case you didn’t connect the dots… Attention: Until WSS Service Pack 2 ships, do NOT attempt to install Visual Studio 2005 or the ASP.NET 2.0 runtime on a machine running WSS or SPS. Until WSS SP2 is installed, doing so will break WSS/SPS.
  • The WSS and ASP.NET teams are exploring ways to encapsulate and host some of the functionality of ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in WSS “v2”.  We’re not guaranteeing that it will happen at all, let alone how and when it would happen.  If it happens, you should treat it like a happy surprise — don’t make plans that depend on it.  If it happens, you’ll hear about it here (and other places, too, of course). 

Whidbey will ship this year.  We won’t.  Even when we do, not every customer will upgrade right away.  There’s still work to be done with SharePoint Web Parts.

  • SharePoint Web Parts aren’t that hard.  And they’re very robust.
  • If the big appeal to ASP.NET 2.0 is that User Controls can be Web Parts, you can use the SmartPart to embed ASP.NET 1.1 user controls inside a SharePoint Web Part.  It’s neat technology.

Experiment with Whidbey Web Parts.  Use them as soon as you can in applications built with Whidbey and only Whidbey (i.e., no WSS/SPS in the picture).  But don’t plan to use them in SharePoint sites for a year.  Believe me, no one will be happier than me when we can tell everyone to write all Web Parts in ASP.NET 2.0, and if we can tell you this before next year, we will.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Hi Mike, thanks for the info! This is just what the web part developer community needs.

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    thanks for the posting.. it's good to get a glimpse of future SP developments.

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Thanks EROL MVP SharePoint http://www.mysps.info/default.aspx

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Mike Fitzmaurice hat in einem Artikel Keep Writing SharePoint Web Parts Until (at least) 2006 einige sehr interessante Aussichten auf die zuk

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2005
    Mike Fitzmaurice hat in einem Artikel Keep Writing SharePoint Web Parts Until (at least) 2006 einige sehr interessante Aussichten auf die zuk

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    Mike,
    Something that isn't clear to me yet - will existing Sharepoint Web Parts be able to run on ASP.NET 2.0? It would be great if, for example, we could take advantage of the Office Web Parts in our Whidbey apps without waiting for v3.

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2005
    Any word on WSRP support?

    Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2005
    ASP.NET 2.0 web parts and Sharepoint Service(WSS)

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2005
    Awesome Navigator and I have found many uses - Question - is there a way to change the navigator to go to Document Library views

  • Anonymous
    March 22, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2005
    My warnings are official ones. Our testers and engineers have warned against doing this. Our support people have said in no uncertain terms that they won't support this. If you've managed to make it work in an experimental environment, more power to you. But don't deploy it if you want to stay supported.

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2005
    Thanks for the information Mike. I've been searching for 30 minutes trying to find out some of these details.

    I would like to ask:

    Is it possible to take a traditional SharePoint webpart like MSNBC Weather (with a simple <content> tag) and convert it to the new ASP.NET 2.0 webpart schema (which includes <genericWebPartProperties> for example)? Basically, I would just like to use some existing webparts within the new Whidbey framework. I realize you've mentioned that it should "only run ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts", but is there any way to convert simple ones to the new import format? I am unable to find a reference for the import format at this time.

    Thanks for any input you could offer.

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2005
    For the record, we haven't had to perform any trickery to get it working, it just worked. But thanks for the info Mike.

    Leon Jollans

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2005
    http://blogs.msdn.com/mikefitz/archive/2005/03/17/397775.aspx
    The link above says cannot, until sp2...

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2005
    I could use both FW 2.0 and WSS together!

    Modifications need to be done in IIS.

    Open IIS
    Go to Properties of DefaultWebsite or SharePoint site.

    Go to tab 'ASP.NET'

    Here, you can choose the ASP.NET version.

    That's all

  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 23, 2005
    Hi Fitz, Thanks for the info. Our WSS V2 product consists of both web parts, pieces in a wpresources directory, and full pages in the _layouts directory. Should all this be able to run as expected under ASP.NET 2.0?
    Will my WPPACKAGER packages work at deployment time?

  • Anonymous
    June 27, 2005
    A colleague just asked me if I could provide a pointer to any information regarding the interaction /...

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2005
    Hi can you tell me how to get .Net to do webparts. I know that I have to mention the path to MicroSoft.Sharepoint.dll, but I simply can't find it; hence I cannot install the template.

    So any help on this would be nice.

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