Exploring SharePoint Designer

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 is a powerful new Web development and management software program for the creation, customization, and extension of SharePoint Products and Technologies (Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) sites.

With the new SharePoint Designer, you can customize SharePoint sites for individuals and teams. Office SharePoint Designer 2007 includes an intuitive what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface that enables rapid creation and customization of SharePoint-based sites. You can take advantage of industry standards such as XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language )

code and CSS (cascading style sheets) and the power of ASP.NET to build SharePoint sites that meet your business needs, all based on industry standards for browser compatibility and accessibility.

The WYSIWYG interface allows you to see what the end result will look like as you view and modify pages as it pulls in CSS and ASP.Net controls and technologies into the environment as you author your applications.

Microsoft IntelliSense technologies help eliminate errors caused by writing code by hand or not knowing precise syntax when working with CSS, ASP.NET, and XHTML tags. As you get familiar with working in code view, IntelliSense can also suggest in-context commands based on the work you are currently doing. These suggestions can help you develop pages and tie in and customize the rendering of data sources more quickly and efficiently.

Like in Visual Studio 2005, SharePoint Designer’s multiple dockable task panes mean that you can pull in and arrange the tools, information, and views you need in the way that works best for you.

As a site administrator or IT manager, you have control over exactly how Office SharePoint Designer users interact with your SharePoint sites and applications. This helps ensure that designers and developers interact in ways that comply with your policies and procedures. By defining Office SharePoint Designer 2007 contributor settings, you can modify existing SharePoint roles to limit what types of content users can edit, add, or delete; whether they can access and modify content in code view and how users access data; and on which site locations these changes can be made and whether users can change the underlying master pages and style sheets.