Does an HTTPS SharePoint Site Need to Use HTTPS-Compliant Web Parts?

Question

We are planning to create a new sub-site within our company's intranet site, which is built on SharePoint 2007. We want to add a 3rd-party weather web part (which is just a widget to display the local weather forecast) to the home page of the new intranet site.

Since the intranet site uses HTTPS, do we need to find an HTTPS-compliant web part? I'm guessing that if we use a non-HTTPS web part, then users will get some sort of "This page contains both secure and non-secure items" error message when they load the page.

Edit:

I found this post on SF: http://serverfault.com/questions/91159/sharepoint-moss-serve-http-content-on-an-https-page-without-mixed-content-warni, which suggests that the most secure option would be to find a 3rd-party weather web part that uses HTTPS (or create one ourselves). Your thoughts?

Answer 1

There is no need. If your intranet runs in a secure channel accessing external sources, just make sure it is allowed to do (at the firewall / proxy level).

Answer 2

If the weather is retrieved clientside from a non-https url you'll get an error yes. Providers of feed data should enable https too, did you try if that works? :)

There's a free weather webpart from Bamboo: http://store.bamboosolutions.com/pc-55-1-world-clock-and-weather-web-part.aspx

The upside is that it retrieves it's feed serverside so you won't have the client-script issue.

The downside is (if I remember well enough, it's been a while) that it attempts to retrieve the weather on every page hit, slowing down the page especially if the connectivity is not there for some reason.

I usually build my own RSS consumers.. with built in caching.