Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2010 Unleashed

Why Use Different Forms for Different Content Types?

To put it simply, you should create separate forms for different content types where you want to separate properties specific to each content type, such as columns. Just as in a document library, where you can use different document templates for different content types, the same rules apply in terms of capturing metadata specific to a content type. Assigning different forms to each content type means you are able to capture metadata specific to each content type and make it simpler for end users to complete forms.

Note

By default, when you apply multiple content types to a list then forms only show columns associated with a specific content type. In this section, I refer to working with custom ...