Preface
First, a confession: I am not a professional web designer. I am a web developer, a code junkie, a rip-it-open-and-see-how-it-works kind of guy. When Jonathon Hassell approached me about doing a book on SharePoint Designer, my first response was “Why me?” After a series of conversations, I came to understand that my point of view could be useful for explaining SharePoint Designer's “sweet spot” in the SharePoint solution space.
When I first encountered FrontPage 2003, I was not impressed. It seemed to me to be an over-engineered HTML editor that required server extensions and an awkward security configuration to even function properly. Since I spent most of my working life in Visual Studio, it seemed natural to me that that would be the place to build SharePoint solutions. All I really knew of FrontPage was that every SharePoint site I knew of that had allowed its use became unmanageable. The lack of proper controls eventually led to inconsistencies and upgrade problems that were difficult or impossible to fix.
Over the last couple of releases, as FrontPage has become SharePoint Designer, Microsoft has made excellent progress in helping users avoid the problems caused in previous versions. With the 2010 release, SharePoint Designer has become far more than a mere web page editor. It is now a platform for creating powerful applications within SharePoint. Many of the solutions that would have required a developer to create in previous releases are now accessible to site designers and power users through SharePoint Designer.
What Software Will I Need?
The short answer to this question is, of course, none. This is a book. A better answer is that, in order to fully learn the concepts presented, you will want to have the following software available. Fortunately, all of these products can be downloaded as evaluation editions, and they can all run on a single 64-bit virtual machine.
- SharePoint Designer 2010: This available as a free, fully licensed download from Microsoft.
- InfoPath Designer 2010: This application is needed for the final two chapters only.
- SharePoint Server 2010: Standard Edition will be sufficient for the earlier chapters in the book, but you will want to have an Enterprise server available later on.
Caution If your server is running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, stop! You cannot use SharePoint Designer 2010 with any previous version of SharePoint. You will need to download and use SharePoint Designer 2007 for use in such an environment.
Finding What You Need in This Book
This book has been created to lead a first-time user from installation of SharePoint Designer through creating advanced web sites that provide a platform for complex business processes. The chapters are divided into three parts: the basics, advanced web sites, and enterprise business solutions.
Note This book is about a specific tool designed to work with the SharePoint platform. A certain familiarity with the SharePoint environment and web design in general is assumed. If terms such as HTML, CSS, lists, libraries, and pages are alien to you, you may want to review them before diving too deeply into SharePoint Designer.
Part I: Covering the Basics
Our first four chapters cover the product fundamentals. This introductory material is intended for web designers and developers who are new to SharePoint Designer. Readers with some familiarity with SharePoint Designer may wish to skim these chapters for topics that are new to them. For beginning users, these chapters are best read in order.
Chapter 1: A Quick Guide to SharePoint Designer
This chapter introduces SharePoint Designer and discusses some of the key concepts around the product. You will walk through the installation process and be taken on a quick tour around the user interface. The chapter concludes with a discussion of best practices to observe when using SharePoint Designer.
Chapter 2: Editing Pages
Chapter 2 introduces you to creating and editing pages in SharePoint Designer. The various views, task panes, and tools are described with step-by-step exercises.
Chapter 3: Using SharePoint to Storing Data
Chapter 3 covers using SharePoint designer to customize the data stored within SharePoint in lists and libraries. The interfaces for customizing site columns and content types will be explored as well.
Chapter 4: Managing Web Parts
Web parts are the “widgets” of SharePoint. This chapter covers creating, editing, and customizing web parts and their connections through SharePoint Designer. Using ASP.NET controls within SharePoint pages is also covered.
Part II: Advanced Site Customization
Chapters 5 through 9 cover various topics and can be read in whatever order they are needed. This is more-advanced material that will be most understandable to readers already familiar with the concepts covered in Part I.
Chapter 5: Displaying Data
Chapter 5 focuses on displaying data within SharePoint pages. This includes data stored within SharePoint lists and libraries as well as tabular data stored in a database such as Microsoft SQL Server.
Chapter 6: Styles and Themes
Chapter 6 covers the techniques needed to “brand” a SharePoint site. Branding refers to the fonts, colors, images, and layouts of the pages within a site.
Chapter 7: Managing Publishing Sites
This chapter covers the use of the web content management (WCM) process defined to manage the formal creation and delivery of site content in SharePoint. This is done using SharePoint “publishing” sites.
Chapter 8: Advanced Site Customizations
Chapter 8 covers deep customizations of a site's navigation and search features. This allows a site to be truly unique and not so “SharePoint-looking.”
Chapter 9: Client-Side Programming
Client-side programming refers to code that executes outside of SharePoint, usually in a web browser. This code is typically written in JavaScript. SharePoint 2010 includes a new client-side object model that creates excellent opportunities to improve site performance and behavior.
Note The material in Chapter 9 will be of interest primarily to professional developers.
Part III: Integrating SharePoint
The final three chapters are intended for enterprise developers and power users to enable SharePoint to act as a platform for integrated business solutions.
Chapter 10: Consuming External Data
Chapter 10 examines the techniques available for accessing data that resides outside SharePoint. This data could be available in a database, a line-of-business application, or a web service.
Chapter 11: Using InfoPath Forms
While Microsoft InfoPath is a separate product from SharePoint Designer, InfoPath forms are often components in SharePoint solutions. This chapter provides an introduction to using InfoPath forms within SharePoint. You will explore using forms to customize data entry for SharePoint lists, to provide document information panels within Office client applications, and to create documents in SharePoint libraries that can be integrated with other data sources in SharePoint.
Chapter 12: Automating with Workflows
Chapter 12 describes the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) engine, which is hosted within SharePoint. Using SharePoint Designer, the user can create complex business processes that execute in a managed environment.
In Conclusion
As a developer, I have come to appreciate the value that SharePoint Designer can bring to a SharePoint solution. It allows site designers a degree of autonomy that has been problematic in the past. With SharePoint Server 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010, Microsoft has shifted the line between control and flexibility.
David and I have spent a great deal of time attempting to create a guide for power users, professional designers, and developers that will help you get the most out of your SharePoint environment. We hope you find this book a valuable resource.
— Steve Wright