SharePoint Designer Tutorial: Working with SharePoint Websites: Get started with SharePoint Designer to put together a business site with SharePoint (Paperback)

by Mike Poole (Author)
Key Phrases: web parts, manage styles, tag properties, Master Page, Web Site, Folder List (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

In Detail

SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer (SPD) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web design program, which has replaced FrontPage, and is the ideal environment for working with pages on a SharePoint site.

This book is ideal for people new to SharePoint Designer who need to put together a working SharePoint site as quickly as possible. If you who want to get started, and finished, as quickly as possible, this book is for you. You won't just learn how to use SharePoint Designer; you'll see how to use it to put together a SharePoint site.

This book will introduce you to the SharePoint Designer environment, and lead you through the key features as you complete important SharePoint customization activities. Throughout the book, you will be developing an example site for a wine business, and you will see what help SharePoint Designer offers, and step through clear instructions to get things done.

The book begins by familiarizing you with the Designer environment and helping you to connect to your SharePoint site. You will then learn how to add and format content, and use SharePoint's workflow tools to collaborate with other content creators before learning how to connect to different SharePoint data sources.

You will also learn to use ASP.NET Web Parts in your SharePoint site to create calendars, graphs, integrate with Exchange Server, and add powerful search tools to your site.

What you will learn from this book?

• Installing SharePoint Designer and connecting it to an existing SharePoint installation
• Finding your way round the SharePoint Designer environment
• Creating a SharePoint site, adding basic content, and publishing your page to SharePoint server
• Formatting your pages with Cascading Style Sheets and Master Pages
• Allow collaboration between different content creators
• Use workflow features to manage the publication of submitted content
• Creating forms that allow users to edit, add, and delete records in data stores
• Adding Web Parts to your site for calendar and schedule, charting, graphing, and data entry, search
• Implementing ASP.NET controls in your pages
• Embedding Exchange data into your applications
• Adding search forms and result lists to your pages, and using search Web Parts

Approach

This book takes you through the development of a SharePoint site for a wine business. The development involves adding features to the site using SharePoint Designer, and for each of these features you will find screenshots and easy to follow instructions.

Who this book is written for?

This book is ideal for people new to SharePoint Designer who need to put together a working SharePoint site as quickly as possible.

No experience of SharePoint Designer is expected, and no skill with creating SharePoint sites is assumed.

About the Author
Mike owns and runs 2F3 Internet, which he established in 1997 to specialize in providing Microsoft-based web development and IT training. He has received a much acclaim for his web development from many satisfied customers including the BBC, British Medical Association, Microsoft, and six different agencies of the Scottish Government. His work has won him awards from Scottish Enterprise (winner of best e-commerce site) and Microsoft (IM bot competition finalist and winner in both UK and international phases). Mike has also written and taught courses in Microsoft Excel and Web Development at Edinburgh University. His current technological interests include creating highly efficient/scalable database solutions and integrating online solutions into virtual environments.

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (July 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847194427
• ISBN-13: 978-1847194428
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #803,380 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Jumpstart for Newcomers To SharePoint Designer, October 8, 2008

By	Michael A. Gannotti "Michael Gannotti on Shar... (North Carolina) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

SharePoint Designer Tutorial. SharePoint Designer Tutorial is a straightforward hands on book targeted at the SharePoint Designer novice looking for a frills approach to becoming productive with SharePoint Designer. Focusing on building a business site in SharePoint with the aid of Designer, SharePoint Designer Tutorial walks you through a series of hands on exercises that when followed from end to end will help you not only build a robust site but will furthermore help you gain the skills to re-use in extending your SharePoint solutions. Concise and to the point at 166 pages the book is a great jumpstart for anyone looking to get comfortable with SharePoint Designer.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not sure who this book is for., October 2, 2008

By	Mr. W. Dieterich (American in Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Got this book to review to see if it was worthwhile for our end users, so my review is focused on that.

The book spends the first half going into basic what are the toolbars, what is HTML, CSS, etc. The stuff every new user book contains.
The examples are good, full of pictures and simple step processes. The examples are simple and make no real use of Sharepoint vs any web server, with the end result being a page for a wine company using master pages and displaying a table with wines and prices, hardcoded.
Good information for someone who wants to create their own pages above what the Edit Page provides.

After that it starts getting bad where the users are given examples where they need to install web parts and that they need to edit the web.config and configuring MS-Exchange. At that point we have passed the point of end user getting extra capability out for Sharepoint and gone into advanced computer user who have installed sharepoint, are familiar with web.config and other such configuration files.

Other bad items.

The previous wine page is gone and all example, like display the wine from a sharepoint list just do it to a blank page. There is a difference from making your site not look like Sharepoint to ignoring master pages and other functionaly that user expect from a Sharepoint page.
Workflows rate around 2 pages with a simple if this person edits an item send email but this is just shown not really exampled.
Example to display data are simple, with a simple example of conditional formating, xpath, and other items dealing with displaying data in lists.
There is no coverage about modifing the New form and Edit form for lists.

From the stand point of giving this to advanced end users and hoping I stop getting requests to do simple things like display a list with conditional formating I don't see this book helping them or me with that. The text and demos on the Microsoft site do a better job.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't work well with SharePoint Server!, February 18, 2009

By	J. K. Winiger (CT, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I got this book because of it's claim of putting together a business site with sharepoint designer. Others said the book covered the basics which I did not need but was not concerned about. What the book does is show you how to create a web site using SharePoint designer, NOT how to create a SharePoint web site! I could have created their business site using any html program. I am none the wiser as to how to use SharePoint designer to create, modify and customize a site running on a SharePoint Server. Very little on Outlook integration, and they only use an XML file as a data source! I don't know about the rest of the world but I connect SharePoint to a SQL database. My main interest was to modify a few pages to add extra fields and arrange then to suite my needs, not the most advanced thing but this book did not help at all.