Delivering Portal Content

The Desktop displays a web page that arranges portal content in rows and columns. Portal Server uses two methods to deliver content to the Desktop:

• Channels are a specialized content areas that occupy small windows within the page. A channel consists of the following elements:

  • A provider object

  • Configuration files

  • Data files, such as XML files and HTML templates, that support the channel

  Examples of channels are the following:

  • News channels display links to online news and information

  • Bookmarks channels display locations of web sites and enables easy access to them

• Container channels assemble content from two or more channels. Often container channels are simply called containers. Portal Server supports AJAXTableContainerProvider, which provides rich user interaction with features such as loading and updating channels asynchronously and drag-and-drop positioning of channels.

  Examples of containers are the following:

  • Table containers arrange channels into rows and columns.

  • Tab containers arrange channels (typically table container channels) with a tab navigation bar across the top, so that the end user views each channel one at a time.

Portal Server supports the following kinds of channels:

• Standard Java portlets use the following specifications to allow portlets to run in multiple portal environments:

  • Portlet Specification 1.0 defined by JSR 168

  • Portlet Specification 2.0 defined by JSR 268

• Providers use proprietary interfaces. For example:

  • JSP providers for compiling and executing JSP files

  • XML providers for translating XML files

• Remote portlets use the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) 1.0 specification, a web services protocol for integrating JSR 168 portlets from remote sources.