Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2007

10.5. Data View Editing Basics

As mentioned earlier, a Data View enables you to use the full WYSIWYG power of SharePoint Designer's design surface. Although your actions within SharePoint Designer are similar to those you take when editing normal web page elements, there are some differences in the effect those actions have on the underlying page code.

The main thing to keep in mind is that what is rendered behind the scenes is not standard HTML. Rather it is XSL, keyed to the data source defined when you created the Data View. This means that when you look at the page in Code view, you do not see the actual information that is shown in the design surface. Instead, you see the XSL code with references to fields (@title, for instance).

10.5.1. Table for One (One Row, That Is . . . )

Data Views are presented as a table — but not quite a standard table. You do not explicitly state the number of rows it displays, for example, because that is managed by the data definition.

The Data View table functions as a repeating data grid in XSL, so whatever changes you make in one row of the table apply to every data row. This includes which data fields are used, formatting options, and any other change. Outside of the data rows, there are also header and footer rows, which are each formatted separately.

Other than those considerations, you can use most of the standard SharePoint Designer table manipulation functions to control its format, such as border formats, cells within a row, and so ...