Easier using widgets in SharePoint 2010 with the Mavention Widget Web Part
Productivity, Sandbox, SharePoint 2010, Tools
In my previous article I explained why using widgets in SharePoint 2010 is inconvenient and showed what you can do to make it easier using the standard functionality. In this article I’ll show you how you can simplify working with widgets even further using the Mavention Widget Sandboxed Web Part.
Mavention Widget Web Part
The Mavention Widget Web Part is a Sandboxed Web Part which allows you to include in the page any snippet of HTML without any restrictions. Although from the functionality point of view this Web Part doesn’t seem like much, it’s offering you a lot of flexibility and simplifies the maintenance of your pages.
In order to use the Mavention Widget Web Part you have to activate the Mavention Widget Web Parts Package first. Since it is a Sandboxed Solution you can do it by opening the Site Settings and navigating to the Solution Gallery.
After uploading and activating the Mavention Widget Web Parts Package the Mavention Widget Web Parts Feature is installed. Because it’s a Site Collection-scoped Feature it is also automatically activated allowing you to directly start with including widgets on your pages.
After activating the Solution Package navigate to the page where you would like to insert a widget, edit the page and from the Insert tab click the Web Part button.
From the Categories list choose Mavention Web Parts (1), select the Widget Web Part (2) and click the Add button (3) to add the Web Part.
After adding the Web Part, edit its properties and from the Widget Web Part section click the Edit… button.
Next, in the dialog window, paste the contents of your widget and confirm changes by clicking the OK button.
After you confirm changes the widget will appear in the Web Part.
Editing the widget is just as easy as adding it. All you need to do is to open the Widget Web Part’s properties, click the Edit… button and you will see the widget’s code just as you pasted it.
Download: Mavention Widget Web Part (5KB, Sandboxed WSP)
January 29th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
Just some thoughts..
I read the previous article and I like to linked script and central repository, wish that the trick of the management and structure could be implemented as a ribbon control .. so that on any library you could check related content..
The Widget webpart in turn should have a browse button from where you can select the script instead of a adapted CEWP ..
Otherwise nice to have learned about the related content option ..
January 30th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Hi Waldek,
Good stuff!
Is this web part working also for widgets that generates forms – i.e. "search-type of widgets" ?
We found out on our public website built in SP that not all widgets can be inserted using CEWP, for some of them you havee to use Web Page Viewer WP – the widgets will insert a ..
Even for YouTube embedding, using WPVWP was more reliable than CEWP. Sometimes, when CEWP was the first piece of content inserted into a Page content rich text area, the clip was floating in the wrong position on the screen in Firefox.
Thanks,
Sandi
February 1st, 2012 at 8:21 am
@Nico: I've done something of that kind to track the usage of Reusable Content (http://blog.mastykarz.nl/mavention-track-reusable-content-usage/). It is an interesting idea indeed to create a central repository of snippets and allow content managers to reuse them within the Site Collection. I guess it's just a matter of approach: in place vs. centralized.