Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 are large and sophisticated web applications... more

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 are large and sophisticated web applications. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the tool meant to customize them—Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007—is a large, sophisticated desktop application. This chapter explores:

• How SharePoint Designer fits in Microsoft's toolset

• SharePoint Designer’s basic editing features

• SharePoint navigation

It also provides an overview of site administration tools.

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SharePoint Designer includes a broad array of features and functions that make it a powerful web design tool. Yet, one of... more

SharePoint Designer includes a broad array of features and functions that make it a powerful web design tool. Yet, one of the key purposes of SharePoint Designer is to enable you not only to “make it look less like SharePoint,” but also to leverage and build upon a number of SharePoint’s features. But what does that mean? What is SharePoint? It’s important to remember that you (or your clients) are implementing SharePoint for a reason. In your efforts to customize its look, you need to be sure you retain its feel—its core capabilities.

In this chapter, you get a feel for what SharePoint is and what it offers the user. Most of the elements described from the user’s perspective can be configured to some extent through the web interface. While you will have a much greater capability to customize them in SharePoint Designer, understanding the built-in functionality will give you a better foundation for your construction. This chapter introduces SharePoint’s:

• Basic structure

• Lists and libraries

• Web Parts

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One of the key benefits of SharePoint is its capability to push functions that used to be solely the province of web designers... more

One of the key benefits of SharePoint is its capability to push functions that used to be solely the province of web designers and server administrators down to more appropriate personnel. This chapter describes some of the elements that can be managed within the context of the web site, as well as aspects that require more direct contact with the server. As with the basic functionality described in Chapter 2, by understanding the administrative tools SharePoint provides, you can avoid reinventing the wheel in your designs. This chapter explores:

• User management

• Site navigation

• SharePoint architecture

• Server-side tools

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You already know that although a SharePoint site is presented to the user as a unified web browsing experience, behind the... more

You already know that although a SharePoint site is presented to the user as a unified web browsing experience, behind the scenes things are a lot more complicated. This chapter shows you SharePoint Designer as the workshop where all of the raw materials are brought together in one place, ready for you to polish and assemble. It shows you how to:

• Find and recognize SharePoint elements within SharePoint Designer

• Read and modify SharePoint site and object properties

• Configure a site to restrict the features SharePoint Designer offers to users

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In Part I, you learned about the basic functions of SharePoint Designer, some of the capabilities of SharePoint itself, and... more

In Part I, you learned about the basic functions of SharePoint Designer, some of the capabilities of SharePoint itself, and how various SharePoint Features were represented in SharePoint Designer. In Part II, you discover how to use SharePoint Designer to customize the look and feel of your site.

Muscle and blood, skin and bones make up the body of a person. This chapter takes you deep inside a SharePoint Page to show you the parts and processes that make up the structure (body). You will learn about:

• The page assembly process

• What it means to customize a page

• The roles of styles and Web Parts

• How to build the skeleton of your site with Master Pages

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A whole book can be written—and many good ones have been—about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This is not one of those books... more

A whole book can be written—and many good ones have been—about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This is not one of those books, but this chapter describes how the power of CSS is used in SharePoint through the use of the powerful tool known as Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer.

After a brief introduction to CSS, this chapter shows you:

• How CSS is used in SharePoint

• Tools available in SharePoint Designer to manage CSS in SharePoint

• How to create your own CSS styles

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Chapter 6 showed how powerful Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are in terms of branding your SharePoint sites. SharePoint Themes... more

Chapter 6 showed how powerful Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are in terms of branding your SharePoint sites. SharePoint Themes take advantage of the power of CSS to package a set of styles and images to be applied to any SharePoint site. This chapter focuses on the internals of Themes, how they operate within the SharePoint framework, and how to generate a new Theme and publish it back to the web server. You will:

• See how SharePoint Themes work

• Explore Themes that come with SharePoint

• Create a customized Theme using SharePoint Designer and publish it back to the web server

• Examine the main styles of a sample theme

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You can use SharePoint Designer, together with the SharePoint site management functions accessible through the browser, to... more

You can use SharePoint Designer, together with the SharePoint site management functions accessible through the browser, to create publishing pages that take advantage of web content management (WCM) concepts in SharePoint to streamline management of content. This chapter shows you how to incorporate the WCM features in SharePoint Server 2007. In particular, this chapter examines:

• What WCM provides in SharePoint

• The components needed to build publishing pages

• Creating Master Pages

• Building page layouts and the underlying content type

• Constructing publishing pages

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In the preceding chapter, you saw how to use a built-in workflow to control the approval of content in a MOSS site. This... more

In the preceding chapter, you saw how to use a built-in workflow to control the approval of content in a MOSS site. This chapter shows you how to use SharePoint Designer’s Workflow tools to perform much more sophisticated tasks. You will learn about:

• How to use the Workflow Designer

• Using conditions to control actions in a workflow

• How to send email to users via a workflow

• The difference between workflow variables and initiation parameters

• Things to keep in mind when designing workflows

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SharePoint lists and libraries provide flexible storage for many kinds of information. The List View Web Part affords an... more

SharePoint lists and libraries provide flexible storage for many kinds of information. The List View Web Part affords an easy way for users to control the presentation of that information both from within the browser and SharePoint Designer. Yet this control is limited. SharePoint Designer also provides a tool that gives you very fine control over the presentation of data—the Data View Web Part.

This chapter shows you how to customize both List View and Data View Web Parts. It explores:

• The flexibility and limits of List View Web Parts

• Comparing List View and Data View Web Parts

• The Data Source Catalog

• XSLT basics

• Visually editing XSLT in SharePoint Designer

• The XPath Expression Builder

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Now that you know how easy it is to modify SharePoint list and library views, and how to convert them to the much more flexible... more

Now that you know how easy it is to modify SharePoint list and library views, and how to convert them to the much more flexible Data View Web Part, you’re ready to move ahead. This chapter builds on your experience with the data view and Data Source Library to reach beyond SharePoint and build truly heterogeneous applications and mashups. You will learn about:

• Types of data sources

• Displaying external data in SharePoint

• Using SharePoint data in multiple sites

• Displaying images in XSL in data views

• Exporting data views

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Chapters 10 and 11 showed you a number of ways to show information on a page from various sources, both from within SharePoint... more

Chapters 10 and 11 showed you a number of ways to show information on a page from various sources, both from within SharePoint and from the outside world. Yet, data display—however sophisticated—is only half of the story. You still need a way to collect information from your users, whether it is data to store, or a set of query parameters for a report. In the digital realm, as in the paper, that way is typically a form. In this chapter, you will learn about working with forms in SharePoint Designer, including:

• Types of forms supported

• Testing non-SharePoint forms with the ASP.NET Development Server

• How SharePoint Data Forms relate to Data View Web Parts

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There are two powerful tools for programmatically interacting with a SharePoint page: the Content Editor Web Part... more

There are two powerful tools for programmatically interacting with a SharePoint page: the Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) and the Web Part Page Services Component (WPSC). You’ll tackle them in this chapter and the next.

The Content Editor Web Part is basically a box into which you can place the content of your choice. A simple concept, yet it’s a key that unlocks a vast and powerful world to the knowledgeable designer and developer. This chapter explores:

• The basics of the Content Editor Web Part

• Embedding client-side script on a SharePoint Page

• SharePoint tools for client-side scripts

• Tips to make using the CEWP easier

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SharePoint provides a number of objects you can access from your scripts. Key among them is the Web Part Page Services Component... more

SharePoint provides a number of objects you can access from your scripts. Key among them is the Web Part Page Services Component (WPSC). Through its object model, it provides the glue that connects the pieces of the page to each other and to the SharePoint server.

This chapter explains what the Web Part Page Services Component is and then examines:

• Services and events

• Web Part storage

• Other client-side SharePoint objects

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Chapter 9 demonstrated how to use the Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer to create custom workflows using the default... more

Chapter 9 demonstrated how to use the Workflow Designer in SharePoint Designer to create custom workflows using the default actions delivered with SharePoint. This chapter shows you how to take your workflows to the next level by creating custom actions in Visual Studio and configuring them to work inside SharePoint Designer.

Specifically, this chapter examines how to:

• Create custom actions

• Deploy custom actions

• Configure custom actions

• Test your custom actions

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Chapter 2 introduced the built-in Web Parts in SharePoint and explained how they could be used to assemble a portal web site... more

Chapter 2 introduced the built-in Web Parts in SharePoint and explained how they could be used to assemble a portal web site. Other chapters introduced the Data View, Data Form and Content Editor Web Parts, which allow you to handle many sophisticated tasks on the web client side. This chapter takes you even further by showing you how to create and deploy your own Web Parts - configuring them to work inside SharePoint Designer. You’ll:

• Look at the role of custom Web Parts

• Create a custom Web Part

• Deploy and configure your custom Web Part

• Test your Web Part

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You’ve already seen how to extend the power of SharePoint with custom-written actions and Web Parts, and how to use those... more

You’ve already seen how to extend the power of SharePoint with custom-written actions and Web Parts, and how to use those enhancements in SharePoint Designer. Now this chapter shows you how to extend the power of SharePoint Designer itself, by creating add-ins using Visual Studio .NET.

This chapter:

• Explains how to install SharePoint Designer add-in templates

• Leads you through creating a SharePoint add-in

• Describes how to test your add-in

• Shows you how to deploy your add-in

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The primary emphasis of this book has been on the tools SharePoint Designer provides to help you produce great SharePoint... more

The primary emphasis of this book has been on the tools SharePoint Designer provides to help you produce great SharePoint site designs and applications. Yet SharePoint Designer also provides many features that are useful for administering and maintaining web sites, but do not directly involve the creative process. This chapter describes some of those key features and shows you how to:

• Create usage reports with SharePoint Designer and SharePoint

• Customize reports

• Develop your own reports

• Back up and restore SharePoint Designer sites

• Save, move, and share list and library templates

It also explains some ways to take the work you have done to customize a site and re-use it in other environments.

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This book has thoroughly introduced you to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Many readers will be satisfied understanding... more

This book has thoroughly introduced you to Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. Many readers will be satisfied understanding the present state of the product. Others, however, may find a history of this latest in a long line of web design tools from Microsoft useful. In particular, it may help in understanding those “What were they thinking?” moments. This appendix discusses the evolution of SharePoint Designer and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, and how they influenced each other.

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