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Part I
The Lay of the Land
Chapter 1: Exploring SharePoint Designer
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Chapter 1
Exploring SharePoint Designer
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
- How SharePoint Designer fits into Microsoft's toolset
- SharePoint Designer's basic features
- How to create a SharePoint site
- How to open an existing SharePoint site
- How a SharePoint site is represented in SharePoint Designer
- How to change site-wide SharePoint properties
- Restricting what SharePoint Designer users can do
What Is SharePoint Designer 2010?
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is a large and sophisticated web application. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the tool meant to customize itâMicrosoft SharePoint Designer 2010âis a large, sophisticated desktop application. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 is the premier tool for customizing sites based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010. It provides features for:
- Creating and editing master pages and page layouts
- Creating and editing cascading style sheets (CSS)
- Designing and editing workflows
- Connecting SharePoint to various external data sources
- Creating and modifying lists, libraries, and views of data
- Managing virtually all other aspects of a user's experience in SharePoint 2010
One very important thing is not on this list: editing SharePoint content. Although SharePoint Designer 2010 does contain powerful page editing tools, these are primarily used in the service of editing the other elements described previously. SharePoint itself is a powerful web-based content management system. Site owners and users use these web-based tools to create and modify the content of their sites.
Your role as a user of SharePoint Designer is to customize the consistent presentation of that content (master pages and CSS), or rules by which it is gathered and manipulated (external data connections and workflow).
All in the Family
In the 2007 Microsoft Office System, Microsoft replaced many of the traditional user interface elements in several client applications, such as Microsoft Word, with what it calls the Fluent user interface, the most noticeable feature of which is a tabbed mega-toolbar called the ribbon. For 2010, this user interface has been expanded to include virtually all Microsoft client applications, including SharePoint Designer 2010. In addition, even SharePoint itself has been endowed with this very popular element (see Appendix B). Figure 1.1 shows an example of the ribbon in SharePoint Designer.
Many tabs on the ribbon are dynamic, or context sensitive, meaning that different tabs are available depending on what you are doing at the time. In Figure 1.1, for example, the tabs in the Code View Tools and List View Tools sections would only be visible simultaneously because the user is editing the design of a list view while the code view portion of SharePoint Designer's split was active. List views and the code view are described in detail later in this book.
A Backstage Pass
In the 2010 client products, Microsoft has taken the Fluent UI a step further. The Office 2007 applications had a Jewel menu that replaced the traditional File menu. For 2010, the name File has been restored, but the functions under that label have expanded even further. Rather than summoning a menu, clicking on the File tab brings forth a new element that Microsoft calls Backstage. Backstage is essentially a full-screen configuration page.
Most ribbon tabs affect a specific piece of a document, such as the font of a word, or the style of a table. Backstage allows you to work with items that affect either the application itself, or the document you are working on as a whole. Different Office applications expose different levels of functionality through Backstage as appropriate. Figure 1.2 shows the SharePoint Designer Backstage.
Try It Out Open a SharePoint Site
1. From the Start menu, select Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. (The File tab will be selected by default.) Observe that very little functionality is available, and many options are âgrayed out.â
2. Click the large Open Site button.
3. In the Site Name box in the Open Site dialog, type the URL of your test SharePoint 2010 site, and click Open.
4. Observe the stages of the site opening process as displayed in the status box. When the opening process is complete, the Site tab is given focus, and you will see an overview of the site you have opened.
5. Click File to return to Backstage. Observe the different elements that are now âlit upâ and available for selection.
Note
SharePoint Designer can be configured to open the most recently used site automatically. If this is the case on your installation, and a site has previously been opened, it will appear as if you have already completed up to Step 3 in the preceding Try It Out. You learn how to change this setting later in this chapter.
Most Try It Out exercises in this book require you to have a SharePoint 2010 site open in SharePoint Designer in order to follow along. Such a site is not provided with this book. Unless otherwise specified, you may use any edition of SharePoint 2010 and any site template as the basis for your exercises. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Microsoft Search Server Express 2010 are availableâwithout licensing costsâdirectly from Microsoft. Many other editions and licensing options ...
