Chapter 4. Exploring the SharePoint Designer Environment

IN THIS CHAPTER

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 ...

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