SmartPart...

There has been lots of talk around on SharePoint related blogs about the Smartpart and how it allows people to develop for SharePoint. So much in fact that i decided to pull finger and get around to looking at it.

I have to say that i am really impressed! Something that has always bugged me is the difference between developing controls for regular ASP.Net applications and SharePoint. The SmartPart allows ASP.Net user controls to be "hosted" in a wrapper Web Part. Quite clever!

This brings up the interesting topic of how web parts etc... will be developed in the next version of SPS. I am guessing here ... and dont know anything for certian ... but i would imagine it will be much closer to the way you develop controls in ASP.Net now. I certainly hope so anyway. So ... the question is ... is using the SmartPart to "host" your ASP.Net controls setting you up for a smoother migration to SPS V-Next?

Anyway ... this is a pretty cool web part ... and one that could save you a bunch of time. Especially if you already have some user controls you want to add to SharePoint pages.