SharePoint 2010 WebPart Personalize Layout

Question

I have a homepage on an Intranet. It has at 15+ webparts (news, weather, etc.) I want to allow the users to customize the page by moving the webparts around or deleting them. At present I don't let them see the ribbon at the top so they don't have access to the "Edit page" button. I have pulled it out from the Ribbon

<a unselectable="on" href="javascript:;" onclick="return false;" class="ms-cui-ctl-large" aria-describedby="Ribbon.WebPartPage.Edit.Edit.Menu.Actions.Edit_ToolTip" mscui:controltype="Button" role="button" style="height: auto;" id="Ribbon.WebPartPage.Edit.Edit-SelectedItem">
<span unselectable="on" class="ms-cui-ctl-largeIconContainer">
    <span unselectable="on" class=" ms-cui-img-32by32 ms-cui-img-cont-float">
      <img unselectable="on" alt="" src="/_layouts/1033/images/formatmap32x32.png" style="top: -160px; left: -96px;">
    </span>
</span>
<span unselectable="on" class="ms-cui-ctl-largelabel" style="height: auto;">Edit<span unselectable="on"> 
</span>Page</span>
</a>

Unfortunately it is not working. Any thoughts?

I will be doing the same with the "Stop Editing" button as well.

Answer 1

According to this post: http://artykul8.com/2011/03/useful-sharepoint-shortcuts/ the trick is to use the MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode(); javascript function.

According to a comment in that same page, in SP2010, that javascript function is only available when you already have a web part in the page. The behavior I observed differs from this one , given that, to me, this function only worked when the page was in edit mode already (and it worked even when the page had no web part added).

I was able to find the javascript file where that function is defined, which is the ie55up.js. You can load it in your masterpage by doing:

<SharePoint:ScriptLink language="javascript" name="ie55up.js" OnDemand="false" runat="server" />

For information about how to build a web control that uses that javascript function, see here: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/SwitchWPMode.aspx

Hope this helps

Answer 2

I finally found the answer to this question. It was very simple after the JS call was determined. I believe this should be for a webpart only page.

To put the page in edit mode for Personalization via a Javascript call:

ChangeLayoutMode(true); // how simple is that??

To stop the editing of the page via a Javascript call:

MSOLayout_ToggleLayoutMode(); // same as given in the other post

The "Stop" edit mode I believe is the same for all pages no matter if it's a personalized page, all webparts page, etc.