It is another great tool to work with SharePoint. It is a free tool and can be used for editing of items inside SharePoint.
Features
Some of the cool features of Designer are:
- It is Free
- WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) Editor
- No Coding Required
- Useful for Administrators as well as Developers
- Workflow Creation
- Editing of Site, Styles Possible using Designer
- Branding
- Form Customizations
- Visio Integration
- InfoPath Forms Data Source Configuration
- Manage Site Permission, Site Columns etc.
- BCS (Business Connectivity Configuration)
- Create Content Types
- ASP.NET, XML, XSLT, RSS, XHTML support
- SOAP and REST support
- Administrator can restrict the use of Designer on sites
Version
The version compatible with SharePoint 2010 is
SharePoint Designer 2010. The previous version of designer was SharePoint 2007.
The ancestor of SharePoint Designer is Microsoft FrontPage which was a web
editor of the times.
Download Link
You can use the following links to download the 32bit and 64bit version of
Designer 2010:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=16573
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=24309
Enabling/Disabling Designer Features
To enable/disable the features of SharePoint Designer use the following item:
Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > SharePoint Designer Settings

You can change the following options on the above screen:
- Enable / Disable SharePoint Designer for the Site
- Enable / Disable detaching page from the site definition
- Enable / Disable customizing master pages
- Enable / Disable managing of web site url feature
Running SharePoint Designer
After the installation you can execute SharePoint Designer using the following link:
All Programs > SharePoint > Microsoft
SharePoint Designer 2010
Following is the application snapshot on executing the above link:

Use the Open Site button and you will get the following dialog:

Enter the site url and click the Open button.
Enter the credentials in the appearing dialog.
You will get the site opened in the main Designer window as shown below:

The left side pane shows various features of the site like:
- Lists and Libraries
- Workflows
- Site Pages
- Site Assets
We can select the item from the left pane and the properties are displayed on the right side.
Customizing Site Pages
Now we can try customizing an existing page
using SharePoint Designer. For this create a new list named contacts in the site
deriving from the Contacts template.
Refresh the site in the Designer using the button on left top system menu.

Now select the Lists and Libraries item from the left pane. You will be able to
see list named contacts.

Click on the contacts item and you will get the properties of it.

You can see 3 forms on the Forms pane which are described below:










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