Web parts in standard forms

Why can't an administrator have web part gallery access in their standard forms? Well you can, those nice people at MSD2D have a solution which they call a 'Web part farm'

Want to create ASP.NET's on a box that has sharepoint installed?

Two tricks. If the ASP.NET is to work within sharepoint then create the webapplication within /_layouts directory

BUT

If you don't want anything to do with sharepoint, you'll find your sharepoint errors out, so you need to set up an 'excluded managed path' See more in admin help pages.
or
Go to Sharepoint Central Administration
Configure virtual server settings from the virtual server list page
Choose a virtual server
Choose Define Managed paths
and you can exclude a particular virtual directory (amongst other things) from being managed within sharepoint. Upshot you can create an ASP.NET app that has nothing to do with sharepoint.

CAML in the desert

Collaborative Apllication Markup language is what you've been thirsting for, as the microsoft site has it:

Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML) is the XML-based language that is used to build and customize Web sites based on SharePoint™ Team Services from Microsoft®.

CAML can be used to do the following:

* Provide schema definition to the Web site provisioning system about how the site looks and acts.
* Define views and forms for data and page rendering or execution.
* Act as a rendering language that performs functions in the DLL like pulling a value from a particular field.
* Provide batch functionality for posting multiple commands to the server using protocol.

Why would you use CAML as opposed to just using Microsoft FrontPage® or other editing tools?

* To make universal changes, such as adding a new logo to the main pages of every site you create.
* To define a content type, such as for adding Flash movies to the SharePoint team Web site.
* It provides the ultimate in customization and flexibility; manipulating CAML allows you total control over the site provisioning system, for instance, when creating a list or adding a view.

read the whole article

Patrick Tisseghem's : Belgian Bomber

If you don't know, its probably on this blog Also he's a Galaxy 500 fan, in shorts he's an all round good egg.

Put down your web parts!

No more brain ache with web parts instead use user controls!! (that's right the really easy one's to use) and get SMARTPART to do the work for you.

Version 1.0.0.0 of smartparts which allows connectable web parts to be created with user controls and has sorted out some security issues....read more from the man Jan to whom we're all so grateful

A microsoft article written again by Jan Tielens giving all the inside track

wppackager

Install webparts across mulitple servers, use wpackager at the microsoft site

introduction to creating custom controls

Microsoft article should help to understand the for runners of web parts.

open web part links in a new window.

If you need to open links in a new windows those nice people at msd2d have the answer:

This is a no-brainer... I have struggled to figure out how to have my links open in a new browser window and some of the examples I could find out there really looked tough, but thankfully this was far easier that I originally thought. Maybe this will help somebody else. Just create your links list, open the page that has the list view on it in FrontPage and right-click on the list, and click “Convert to XSLT Data View“. After it is converted, you can simply right-click on one of the links and select “Hyperlink Properties” and change the target frame according to your preference

see the whole article here, you may need to register