Trinkit, Thinking Web Solutions

Sales, marketing, project managers and even IT managers always seem to latch onto the concept of building a web part to provide custom functionality in SharePoint. I'm always being asked to create a web part for various tasks which just complicates things. In reality 95% of the time a web control will do the job just fine, or better yet a user control.

A web part usually dictates that you will be dynamically creating asp.net controls at runtime or writing HTML tags in managed code. Both of these techniques are pretty horrible and provide no separation between logic and presentation. There are many examples of this on CodePlex.

A user control has a few key advantages over web parts:

• Easier development
  User controls provide a design time surface and allows easier HTML integration

• Easier deployment
  There are less steps required to make a user control available in a SharePoint site

• Less unwanted HTML
  Web parts and the web part framework include additional HTML bloat that decreases accessibility

That said there are a few good reasons why you would want to build a web part:

If you decide that you do need a web part, I would still advocate using a user control. You can either use something like SmartPart, or preferably just embed it yourself as it's a very simple task. By embedding a user control to a web part in a 1-1 relationship, you have the opportunity to use web part properties as well as providing the best user experience.

The same theory can be applied to field controls. Another option when creating web parts is to use XSLT to control the display. I believe this is a great approach as it provides good separation between logic and presentation, makes it easier for integrators and promotes accessible HTML.

I guess web parts just sound cooler?

Resources:

• Using a user control in a SharePoint page

• SmartPart

• User control within a web part