Chapter 4. Exploring the SharePoint Designer Environment
Using the New dialog box
Working with page views
Understanding Web site panes
Using toolbars and task panes
Modifying page-editing and application options
Although the current release of SharePoint Designer keeps the basic FrontPage 2003 user interface, it also includes a large number of enhancements to improve output and productivity for developing both SharePoint and non-SharePoint Web sites. The SharePoint Designer user environment focuses on consolidating similar features into dialog boxes, toolbars, and dockable task panes. It provides you with the flexibility to morph its environment to suit your style and design needs. You can customize the interface to keep the task panes and toolbars that you most commonly use in the front for easy access and hide the less commonly used user interface.
In this chapter, I begin by familiarizing you with the SharePoint Designer environment and then take you through some exercises and help you understand how to customize the user interface to suit your needs. Also, I mention some of the most commonly used user interface features that you encounter every time you work with a Web site in SharePoint Designer. Later in this chapter, I talk about the page-editing and application options that help you make decisions about how certain user interface components should behave and set default settings and schemas for use on Web pages.
When you open SharePoint Designer the first time after it's installed, the default interface layout is shown. Because there's no Web site or Web page open, most of the menu options and task panes in the interface are disabled. The environment is divided into four sections:
The top section has the main commands menu bar and toolbars (the Common toolbar is enabled by default).
The left section shows the Folder List task pane along with additionally enabled task panes.
The center section is either empty (if no page is open) or shows a page view (Design or Code view) for a Web page.
The right section has a set of task panes enabled by default.
Figure 4.1 shows the key components of the SharePoint Designer interface.
Figure 4.1. The SharePoint Designer environment
It's important to understand that while this interface is the default interface, SharePoint Designer allows you to customize it to a large extent. So, for example, if you feel more comfortable having the Folder List task pane on the right side of the environment, you can move it there.
The first operation that you usually perform is to create or open a site. Choose File 
Open Site to open a site in SharePoint Designer. For illustration purposes, I use a WSS v3 site, open it in SharePoint Designer, and then open its default.aspx page by double-clicking it in the Folder List task pane. Figure 4.2 displays the SharePoint Designer user interface after opening a WSS v3 site in it.
The interface becomes live after you open the site in SharePoint Designer. The Folder List task pane in the left section shows the list of subsites, lists, document libraries, folders, and files, with icons representing the type and nature of the content.
The center section has a tabbed interface. The Web Site tab allows you to switch between a set of Web Site panes, which I discuss later in this chapter. Then, depending on the number of pages open for editing, you see multiple tabs, each allowing you to activate the associated page for editing. When you activate a Web page for editing, you can choose from a set of page views, which allow you to edit the design and layout of the page or the code associated with the Web page.
Figure 4.2. A WSS v3 site open in SharePoint Designer
In the right section is the Toolbox task pane, which is mostly disabled when you have the Web Site tab open in the center section. However, when you switch to a Web page, the Toolbox task pane becomes enabled and allows you to insert a number of HTML, ASP.NET, and SharePoint controls on the Web page. I talk about the various task panes in detail when discussing the corresponding features in various chapters in this book. However, later in this chapter, I show how you can reposition task panes to customize the SharePoint Designer environment to suit your needs.