Graphicalwonder

SharePoint Designer 2007 (Tips!)

Aug 24

Shane PerranSharePoint 2007 1 Comment

If you are keen on customizing MOSS 2007/WSS v3 then you’ll likely be getting aquainted with SharePoint Designer 2007.

Some tips for using SharePoint Designer 2007

1. Turn off unwanted visual aids by going to “View, Visual Aids – and unchecking the ones you don’t need, or just clicking “Show” to remove them all.  This will clean up your design view considerably.
2. Turn on your master page toolbar by going to “View, Toolbars, Master Page”.  This will give you quick access to some of the master page goodies like content placeholders.
3. Organize your styles by filtering out the ones not used on the page you are working on.  You can do this by going to “Task Panes, Manage Styles and then Selecting the Options menu from the Manage Styles pane.”  Notice: Manage styles also gives you a style preview window at the bottom – this is a great way to see real-time results of the CSS you are editing.
4. Take control over auto-generated code. Those using SPD 2007 and also Expression Designer may find themselves frustrated with auto-generated CSS.  When you place a background color on a table cell or div for example, rather than placing bgcolor= in the tag, the editors are getting wise enough to apply a class and create the CSS.  While this is a step in the right direction, it’s not perfected by a long shot and most designers want to control what is added to the page.  To turn this feature off go to Tools, Page Editor Options, CSS TAB and turn on manual CSS application.  Under the GENERAL tab of this same menu you will find other goodies like line numbers and word wrap.
5. Site Reports.  This is worthy of a “Hidden Gem” post in itself.  When connected to a web/site you can get a number of reports.  From what master pages and css files are used and linked where, to broken links and slow pages.  You can access this by going to “Site, Reports”.  Shared content is of particular interest.
6. Screenshots of the above mentioned (and others).
   
7. When all else fails come visit us on the SharePoint Design and Customization newsgroups.  Lawrence Liu of the SharePoint Team was kind enough to get this puppy up and running for us.