[Another in a series of posts about moving from Django to Plone. I’m a Plone/Zope newbie writing about my bafflements and enlightenments as they happen.
Some of my opinions are certainly wrong. I’m writing this in the expectation that the history of my meandering learning path may be useful, or at least entertaining, to future Plone newbies. If I sound wordy today, it may be because I just watched Good Night, and Good Luck. on my Blu-ray player. (The difference between Edward R. Murrow, and the regurgitating talking heads of today’s television, is a sad thing to contemplate.)]
I spent only half of this week on Plone/Zope. Here’s some of what I bumped into.
Portlets, Viewlets, and Content Managers
I’ve been puzzled about the big conceptual difference between portlets and viewlets. Not until I read page 234 of Professional Plone Development did I understand that it was in their invocation model! A viewlet will generate page content anywhere in the page when a viewlet manager deliberately invokes it. A portlet may generate content in the left or right column, automatically.