SharePoint Designer 2013's Missing Design View

Great points!

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:29 PM

I completely agree-but like Laura of course I'm biased ;-) I use SPD to do my job every day, even as a powerful discovery and learning tool. As a wannabe-programmer, it's extremely helpful to find what code corresponds to what by clicking the element in Design View.

Some very large SharePoint customers have built their entire build/maintenance structure around Information Workers with SPD...VS is prohibited. Not sure how they'll take this news.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:31 PM

8

Code and design go hand in hand. If you can't see the effects of how repositioning elements, adding/removing code blocks, or applying any customizations without first saving the page then reloading the web page in your browser, then you are just creating inefficiency in productivity.

Making a change and seeing the result is a fundamental point in any web development process. Are we going to see the design view go away in Expression too? Design is just as critical as code.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 4:08 PM

Crazy.

George W

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 4:49 PM

Um, what?! This seems like a very very poor decision. All of your points are valid, Marc. I use DVWPs all the time, and even though most of my work is done in code view, the design/split views are just as critical for testing, tweaking, and debugging before publishing/saving my work to a live site. This should be concerning to anyone in the "Middle Tier" development community.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 5:21 PM

Hi Marc,

You make some very good observations. I have to assume the Microsoft was finding it too difficult to get design view to properly render a page in a way that could still be edited and is trying to move more users to browser based tools. First, I assume that it will be added back. Second, my understanding is that Microsoft wants to encourage non-coder power users to use the web based tools which have been improved some what, while the coders can make the more complex updates in SPD, in code, the way they likely were before. Please do not get me wrong, I am not defending the action, I agree with the other responses that Design View is a major asset to many and taking it away may be a huge issue.

Eric Overfield - PixelMill - blog.pixelmill.com/ericoverfield - @EricOverfield

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 7:36 PM

I feel with Eric Overfield...

I know, assumptions are the mother of all f*ckups, but I also assume Microsoft will add it back into SPD. I cannot imagine Microsoft will leave this out, seeing how important this functionality is to so many SharePoint consultants.

Well, we'll see.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 7:50 PM

If they arent going to add it back then I feel that they should provide some detailed information on how we are to accomplish the same thing. Its ok if the tools change, but if we are missing huge areas of functionality it could impact our ability to use SharePoint 2013.

Things like conditional formatting and DVWP add so much to solutions, but if they have to be done in code then I imagine many places just wont do them. This means they will build less things in SharePoint or, the things they build will not be as user friendly.

Also, going off some of the items Laura mentions, it is going to be difficult to create a complete business process once the tools are completely removed.

~Jennifer Mason ~My Blog~ ~SharePoint Support~ ~SharePoint Training~ ~Follow me on Twitter!~

Edited by Jennifer MasonMVP Wednesday, August 01, 2012 7:51 PM

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8:02 PM

Microsoft has always positioned SharePoint as a platform where power users (non-IT users or at least non-developers) have the opportunity to adjust the product to their needs, without calling in the guys from IT.

Stripping functionality from SharePoint Designer, thereby reducing this possibility, will be detrimental to this position.
Therefore, maybe naive, I still think it will be added back, or at least there will be a comparable tool provided.

Don't forget, we're still looking at the preview version...

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8:21 PM

Excellent post Marc, thanks for starting the dialog!

It took a long time for the 'proper' use of SPD to be accepted by many organizations; and a long time for the SharePoint community in mass to learn the proper ways to make use of this tool. Removing the design view is detrimental to the success of the tool in the long run unless the functionality is returned in some way.

Without a resolution to the points made in your post Marc, and the comments following it, I believe the decision will also hinder the adoption of SharePoint 2013.

trockwell@sharepointexperts.org

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8:25 PM

So we should all know that I get along with Marc on the twitters, so no one should view my comments as an attack. As I can identify with all the comments and the points that Marc listed out, let me be 'that guy'. I'm not going to bash SPD because it certainly has gotten better in sp2010, but am I the only one to have issues and curse at design view mode? Am I the only one that cringes when I read 'using SharePoint Designer as the tool to build full scale applications' ? Certainly not since we have the ability to turn off access to SPD in a permission level. And I'm not the only one to have a rule of not using SPD in a production environment.

So again, before the flaming torches come at me....I see what everyone is saying and I am going to sit back and wait for what Microsoft is going to officially say about this. I just want to firmly park this comment in the thread so that when other people read this, they know that not everyone has love for 'design view'. Someone needs to be negative and it might as well be me.

Thursday, August 02, 2012 4:26 AM

I have to admit that I am a little mystified by the decision not to include the Design View in SharePoint Designer 2013. Aside from the practical examples you and others provide, it seems to single-handedly change the definition of the SharePoint Power User. We need to be finding ways to improve and simplify their experience...this seems to do the opposite.

For reference, I am a developer and hate the Design View in SharePoint Designer. I can't seem to use it without mucking everything up and I never use it for my purposes. But it definitely has its place in the SharePoint world and I hate to see it go.

The one thing I do use it for fairly frequently is image maps. It definitely makes that easy.

Doug Hemminger http://www.sharepointdoug.com

Thursday, August 02, 2012 1:01 PM

I almost never use the DVWP, but I completely agree with Marc. I understand its value, and I know many that have used it. The fact that you can still use the code viewer is irrelevant - I would argue the people that the people that want to use the DVWP, are not the people that will be comfortable with code view, and those that are have other tools at their disposal.

While I understand the desire or need to drop the design view (ironic given that the name of the product is Designer)... due to the complications arising from HTML etc, I would argue that it never rendered HTML very well anyway. I did however render and configure the DVWP properly.

At the very least, I would like to see a DVWP designer - even if it needs to be a separate product, or a one click install like Report Builder or Dashboard Designer. How hard would that be to pull off?

John

Thursday, August 02, 2012 3:42 PM

This is an important issue to me, as well. I've gone around the country and broadcast in international webinars the easy way to add visual interest to SharePoint sites through the use of the Data View Web Part. I haven't tried it yet first hand in SharePoint Designer 2013, but if it's true that you can't insert a new Data View Web Part anymore, that completely kills that feature so many people I've talked to love.

Tom Resing, Microsoft Certified Master in SharePoint 2007 - http://tomresing.com

Thursday, August 02, 2012 5:14 PM

I also agree with you, Marc. I do not understand that they want us to use new applications for creating XSLT designs, HTML designs, DVWP's, and so on.

Regards,
EStruyf

Thursday, August 02, 2012 6:11 PM

This is disappointing news. Hopefully Microsoft will reconsider, provide an alternative, or provide some guidance. I agree that witnessing the effects of code behavior is essential.

Thursday, August 02, 2012 6:24 PM

Agree with you Marc !! I will lose a lot of time without the design view... just a little exemple, I use the design view to highlight a portion of code ...

Thursday, August 02, 2012 7:34 PM

7

I also agree with Marc, but I can't say I didn't see it coming. I attended a SharePoint Designer feedback session during the SharePoint conference in 2009 and the SharePoint Designer Team members present were talking about pulling the design view in SharePoint Designer 2010. I voiced my opinion then that it was a bad idea and I still think it is today. In addition to all the things it cripples it also sends a very bad message to Information Workers.

Instead of using a FREE design tool with limitations go PURCHASE a relatively expensive editor like Expression Web or Dreamweaver. And then spend the time, effort, and training required to learn how to use a professional web design tool. And you still won't be able to do what you really want like apply conditional formatting or create a new DataForm for a list.

Don't get me wrong, SharePoint Designer has never been perfect. But SharePoint has always been the product that was supposed to empower Information Workers. Now we are taking tools away from them and replacing it with tools that really should only be in the hands of professionals who have been trained to use them. As I mentioned I think it sends entirely the wrong message.

Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Friday, August 03, 2012 8:04 AM

Completely agree Marc. One of the improvements in SharePoint 2010 was how easy it became to add conditional formatting to a list view. You can create the view in the browser, select to Edit in SharePoint Designer, then in the design view: skewer click, choose your row, set a condition and apply formatting. Achieved without using Advanced view and without unghosting (customising) the page. This was so quick and easy; to have to use a code editor to do the same thing will take much longer, is a different skill set and represents much higher risk of damaging the list view.

If this is a matter of Microsoft needing to update SharePoint Designer so that it understands and can render HTML5 then I really think that is what needs doing. SharePoint Designer 2013 needs to be able to "design" SharePoint 2013 (the clue is in the name).

I'm also vexed here by Microsoft adding (or enhancing) features for a single product release and then taking them away again in the next release. I know that technology moves fast but businesses will stop investing if they are going to lose that investiment after 3-4 years when the next version comes out.

Friday, August 03, 2012 8:14 AM

There is only one thing I can think of why they removed the design view, and that is to limit the usage for business users. We all know that it is not a tool for business users, but many of them use it and most of the time they break something.

Maybe the limitation of SharePoint Designer in SharePoint 2010 wasn't enough, and that way they removed the design view. Which will indeed stop the business users to use the tool, but limits the users for which it was originally be developed.

Regards,
Estruyf

Friday, August 03, 2012 8:53 AM

I presumed it was just a bug with the preview. Now I'm very worried that the investment we all made in Composite Apps (1/6th of the platform value proposition) is being removed.

Just imagine having to build you SPD based solutions in 2010 and then upgrade them to 2013 as a deploymnet method until 2016 is released :-(

Friday, August 03, 2012 11:50 AM

In addition to being a really bad idea, this the kind of decision that makes it hard to push our adoption beyond the OOB features. As SharePoint usage grew, we started trying to make things look better and we started to build more comprehensive solutions on the platform. In the absence of a definitive roadmap from Microsoft, we had no choice but to make our plans based on what is currently available. It’s unconscionable to simply remove a feature that so many people use and so many have publicly demonstrated and advocated at every SharePoint I’ve ever been to.

I hope that those who have suggested that this feature will ultimately be included are right. If Microsoft makes it harder to build solutions on SharePoint, we will build them somewhere else.

Friday, August 03, 2012 1:27 PM

I've noticed that it is possible to open a SP2013 site with SP Designer 2010... so as I cannot see a lot of differences between SPD2010 and 2013, and if MS decide to remove the design view in SPD2013, I will probably use SPD2010 :)

Friday, August 03, 2012 8:35 PM

The major difference will be in Workflow. SPD 2013 supports building out Workflows that use the new Windows Azure Workflow environment. SPD 2010 won't support that. There's also a good chance as we get to RTM that it may not continue to work.

Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Friday, August 03, 2012 10:27 PM

I believe this is part of a larger discussion. If you read the messaging coming from the SharePoint team, this change is consistent with a move away from SharePoint being such an open and customizable platform. That's not my opinion; here's the supporting quote:

"Use SharePoint as an out-of-box application whenever possible - We
designed the new SharePoint UI to be clean, simple and fast and work great
out-of-box. We encourage you not to modify it which could add complexity,
performance and upgradeability and to focus your energy on working with users
and groups to understand how to use SharePoint to improve productivity and
collaboration and identifying and promoting best practices in your organization."

Jeff Teper - The New SharePoint (SharePoint team blog post)

When SharePoint first came out, it's primary value was as an application--a quick way to create an Intranet. MCMS at the same time was designed as a platform--build your own site, but build any type of site. The market responded that they wanted both in one product and SharePoint made huge strides as a platform. Now it seems that the SharePoint team has decided that the pendulum has swung too far.

- cawood

Proposed As Answer by Greg-E Monday, August 06, 2012 6:01 PM
Marked As Answer by dplotnikov - mvpMVP, Editor Tuesday, August 07, 2012 6:50 AM
Unmarked As Answer by Marc D Anderson MVPMVP Tuesday, August 07, 2012 11:17 AM

Friday, August 03, 2012 10:28 PM

I am a developer, but, when it comes to SP I try and do as much as possible in SP Designer vs. Visual Studio. It federates responsibility and enables non devs to contribute more easily. This will be a deal breaker for us, we use SP on our public and intranet sites. Poor decision from MS, why do they consistently ditch tech that works for something that doesn't.

Monday, August 06, 2012 5:52 AM

I do not think that opening pages of SharePoint 2013 site is possible in SPD 2010.

I tried opening one of the migrated page of SharePoint 2013 Preview (upgraded from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 Preview) in SPD 2010 but it displays:

"The Page has controls that requires a Master Page Reference, but none is specified". It asks me to attach a master page or correct in code view. Even after attaching a master page the page is not rendered completely. The reason is the changes in the tags.

I also created a new page in SharePoint 2013 Preview site and tried opening it in SPD 2010 to insert a dataview webpart but not luck. It just displays SPHTMLTag in the Design view.

Just wondering how to add or repair the Dataview webpart in my upgraded environment. I have about 10-15 pages where I have inserted dataview webparts. oops...

Regards,

Villpates (Vipul Patel)

Villpates

Monday, August 06, 2012 6:35 PM

This seems to be a strategy to improve the reputation of SharePoint. Wrangling the 'Citizen Developer' and the 'Independent Business Analyst' will decrease the number of solutions that are poorly planned, implemented, and then used by a bunch of people who walk away with a negative opinion of SharePoint.

This is the kiss of death for a platform that has such potential to answer the need of being a RAD solution for business analyst and information workers. It would be interesting to know the number of solutions built by Code and the number built by design.

It appears that Access 2013 is being pushed as the 'Rapid Application Development Platform' going forward. InfoPath 2013 has been down-played and apparently set aside so far - with no improvements or changes in this release.

Html, css, and js are the new 'Designer' tools - Jack Teper said in The New Sharepont (Sharepoint team blog post):

'The new SharePoint makes it much easier to build, buy, deploy and manage
applications via the our new Cloud App Model for the Office 2013 Wave using web
standards like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, REST, OAuth and OData. The back-end can
be anywhere but we streamlined access to Azure services. We built in the new
“Napa” web-based development from the Visual Studio team right inside the
SharePoint browser experience.'

The age of 'Non-programmer' developer is coming to an end at Microsoft. Many a vision may be squelched. It would be wonderful for Microsoft to go the hard way of improving SharePoint Designer to AID the non-programmer instead of the easy way of limiting them.

By the way ... 'Napa' Tools for Office 365 (Powered by Visual Studio) does not have a design view - only code

Edited by Greg-E Monday, August 06, 2012 8:25 PM

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 5:25 AM

6

I agree with Marc and Laura 100%.

The point of SharePoint is (was) to put the tools to solve business issues into the hands of the business people, trained business people. We can get close to our business solutions using the great tools in the SharePoint browser. SharePoint Designer 2010 allows us business people to get even closer to our perfect business solutions. We call on our developer friends to bring the business solution all the way home, but some of us business users don't have access to developer friends, nor do we have time to learn code.

Removing the design view from SharePoint Designer 2013 will take this powerful tool out of the hands of the trained business person.

Removing the design view from SharePoint Designer 2013 puts more responsibility back onto the already overworked IT department.

Removing the design view from SharePoint Designer 2013 will delay the completion of business solutions and loose valuable development momentum.

In short, removing the design view from SharePoint Designer 2013 moves SharePoint away from the flexible solution platform we’ve grown to depend on, and moves it closer to any other development platform that requires a degree in computer science to be successful.

-A Code-Free SharePointer

Tamara Bredemus SharePoint Minion...working up to Maven

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 10:49 AM

.......

Proposed As Answer by al2017 Tuesday, August 07, 2012 10:52 AM
Edited by al2017 Tuesday, August 07, 2012 10:52 AM

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 11:21 AM

Sympraxis Consulting LLC - Marc D Anderson's Blog - @sympmarc - jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) - USPJ Academy

I just changed this thread from a Question to a General Discussion. The thread is probably not going to get any sort of answer from the Microsoft side (most threads in the forms do not), and what we're all discussing here is our own views on what we think should happen and our frustrations (or satisfaction) with the missing Design View.

Thank you all for contributing. I'm hoping that the discussion is far from over, but I really have no idea.

M.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 9:09 PM

agreed! whats the point to take off the design view :(

Shakir Majeed Khan, MCITP (SharePoint 2010), MCPD(SharePoint 2010)

Tuesday, August 07, 2012 9:56 PM

Thanks for starting the discussion. This was the most amazing thing I discovered as I started preparing to update my SharePoint Designer book. SharePoint Designer is no longer a "designer"! I surely hope that this was a short-sighted move by MS but I suspect that they are trying to move these types of solutions to the browser as has been intimated by the blog post that was referenced. I also read somewhere that by allowing a "Designer" to use any tool they wished to use, and to support the HTML 5 and CSS3 as well as multiple JS libraries, that it became too difficult to create a visual designer that would do any justice to the platform. I believe the resources went into the Design Manager for integrating SP parts into HTML templates and that is the extent of the design tools. I'll be following along closely to see if they make any more changes to it by RTM. But for now, I think the Designer in the name will simply refer to the new Workflow Designer.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012 5:08 AM

I agree with Mark, the loss of design view in SPD is huge. From another perspective as
a developer I use SPD to create elements then export them from SPD to Visual
Studio. The design view gives me a tool to create master pages with style
sheets to mock-up the elements of my designer. I don’t see the 'need' to remove
this, I hope this is a mistake which can be fixed before the release of the
product. It makes me wonder if there will not be a design view, then why did
they simply put the word 'code' at the bottom of the view area? If there was
only a code view their would be no need for the word code. I guess this is my
hope that more is coming to the left of the word 'code'.<o:p></o:p>

Gary Newman MCSE, MCT, CCNA MCDBA, MCAD, MCSA MCTS SharePoint 2007 Dev & Admin MCPD SharePoint 2010 Development My Blog www.sharepoint2010now.com

Wednesday, August 08, 2012 5:52 PM

I'm in the same boat as Gary and agree with everyone's posts. Also, since I have a thread started off of my latest Facebook status I thought I'd append my lastest comment from FB to this thread which is:

"It's a very big loss for the DVWP. Also, regardless that Dreamweaver can be used for branding I still see it affecting branding productivity. Branding really isn't just the design elements (logos, styling, etc). There's more to it especially for people like me who are both a developer and a designer.

For example, I develop the custom controls that get embedded in the Master Pages and Page Layouts and I'm also the one who does all of the creation/design of these pages so I have a system down with how I work. Such as, I use Design View to preview and click on the page elements so the particular markup is selected when I switch back to Code View. I also use the clickable tag preview section (or whatever it's called) which displays below the file in Design View to navigate through the tags. So I do a lot of switching back and forth between the views which works best for me. I'm all about navigating in ways that make it quicker and easier to be most productive so I'm NOT looking forward to having to do more tedious steps."

Christina

Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:21 AM

Today our company's new intranet went live on the 2010 platform. It is a SharePoint 2010 site with many bells and whistles, including CQWP in jQuery sliders, a mega menu driven by a list and a DVWP (documented on my web site), sophisticated page layouts for several publishing content types and much more. All of this has been achieved without writing a single line of custom code or even touching Visual Studio. Just out of the box SharePoint, with SharePoint Designer 2010, InfoPath and a dash of jQuery. The goal was to create a site where not every other change has to be done with code or with Visual Studio. We wanted to present a solution that can provide a quick turn-around for business requirements, avoiding the lengthy, ITIL-riddled path through the DEV-TEST-STAGING-PRODUCTION environments with all its counter-productive slowness. We now have such a flexible and very functional intranet site. Things are dynamic, a lot of settings can be adjusted with parameters in lists and will then flow through to a number of DVWPs and other elements that present the data. Many more business improvement projects are in the pipeline.

Although I work in Code View and Split View a lot, I could not imagine pulling this off with a SP Designer that does not have the Design view. Forcing the user through a sheer endless loop of "save and open in browser" to be presented with an error message that recommends checking the code in SPD is quite ironic.

Removing the Design View from SPD 2013 will make it impossible for most of my team to deliver solutions to our business users. Our budget will not allow us to purchase Visual Studio licenses for my team just so we can debug XSL Templates or preview page layouts. Using VS just to check out SharePoint pages definitely does not justify the cost and is a cannon aimed at sparrows. Also, there's the learning curve for VS. I can imagine that a lot of small to mid size companies are in a similar situation.

Information workers and power users will need much more turn-around time for SharePoint site builds. Businesses will suffer from missed improvement opportunities and lost productivity.

Not a good move.

With this prospect, I'll definitely not be pushing towards an upgrade to SharePoint 2013. It's a step backward and will cut off people's creativity and productivity.

Regards,

Ingeborg Hawighorst

teylyn

MVP - Microsoft Excel

web: www.teylyn.com

twitter: @IngeborgNZ

Edited by teylyn [MVP]MVP Thursday, August 09, 2012 11:02 AM link to article

Thursday, August 09, 2012 10:39 AM

An oft wrongly quoted Chines proverb expresses my opinion

A Picture's Meaning Can Express Ten Thousand Words

Thursday, August 09, 2012 12:16 PM

http://blog.furuknap.net/i-was-wrong-kill-the-sharepoint-designer-design-view

Marc,

I think Microsoft is dead right in killing the design view. It leads unskilled people to build unreliable solutions, costing organizations productivity and cause data loss.

I've summarized both my praise of the decision and my revised rationale here:

.b

USPJ Academy - The World's First SharePoint University http://www.uspja.com/ Offering training and degrees for SharePoint Professionals

Edited by Bjørn Furuknap Thursday, August 09, 2012 12:18 PM spelling

Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:05 PM

4

Furuknap, what about unskilled .NET developers who don't understand SharePoint and create a mess by deciding everything is a nail to their .NET hammer? Power Users like me and my team fixed up "solutions" by "developers". We used SharePoint Designer and a good understanding of how SharePoint works, combined with a knowledge of the business needs. See my comment on your blog post.

If Power Users are a danger to the SharePoint environment, then upskill them and enable them to do the job properly. They already know the business and the facets of its context. That's a lot easier and faster to do than train an external "developer" in how your business works, or SharePoint.

Speaking from (bad) experience with "developers" and (good) experience with "power users".

cheers

Ingeborg Hawighorst

teylyn

MVP - Microsoft Excel

web: www.teylyn.com

twitter: @IngeborgNZ

cheers, teylyn
www.teylyn.com

Edited by teylyn [MVP]MVP Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:07 PM

Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:31 PM

Ingeborg

I responded to your comment on my blog to address your thoughts. In short, however, you are comparing bad apples to good oranges, with the emphasis of the comparison being on the 'good' versus 'bad' rather than 'apples' versus 'oranges'.

.b

USPJ Academy - The World's First SharePoint University http://www.uspja.com/ Offering training and degrees for SharePoint Professionals

Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:51 PM

I find it more a company/business choice that SharePoint designer may be used on their environment, than a choice from Microsoft.

What could happen now is that they try to modify the code by them self from what they have found on the internet.

Thursday, August 09, 2012 1:56 PM

Switching to Dreamweaver is maybe a good thing, but I only see the value in it for Internet facing websites.

For collaboration sites this involves a lot more work when you need to do it in Dreamweaver.

Thursday, August 09, 2012 2:18 PM

It is by design and won't be changed!

Regards
Henrik A. Halmstrand
sharepointrevealed.com
getspconfig.codeplex.com
Please click Mark As Answer; if a post solves your problem or Vote As Helpful; if a post has been useful to you.

Thursday, August 09, 2012 2:36 PM

It is by design and won't be changed!

Regards
Henrik A. Halmstrand
sharepointrevealed.com
getspconfig.codeplex.com
Please click Mark As Answer; if a post solves your problem or Vote As Helpful; if a post has been useful to you.

So were you trying to be ironic with this comment, or was that just a happy accident?

- cawood

Friday, August 10, 2012 7:00 AM

Cawood what is the ironi of my comment? The design view as we all know has been removed and it won't be there since there are some limitations regarding HTML5. I can't tell you more right now.

Regards
Henrik A. Halmstrand
sharepointrevealed.com
getspconfig.codeplex.com
Please click Mark As Answer; if a post solves your problem or Vote As Helpful; if a post has been useful to you.

Friday, August 10, 2012 9:35 AM

>> It is by design and won't be changed!

> So were you trying to be ironic with this comment

It seemed like a statement of fact to me.

Now another question is how a mere MCC (and not an MVP) knows this for sure given that if anyone is likely to see the RTM version early it will be SP MVPs.

Given the fact that MS have ignored all Power Users and have kept Start out of RTM for Windows 8 despite massive complaints, it does seem unlikely that they are going to show sense in this case (and put Design View back) but for a non-MS insider to state so firmly that *it won't be changed* does seem extremely odd. But ironic, no.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Friday, August 10, 2012 9:45 AM

Mike,

I choose to avoid answering you right now.

Regards
Henrik A. Halmstrand
sharepointrevealed.com
getspconfig.codeplex.com
Please click Mark As Answer; if a post solves your problem or Vote As Helpful; if a post has been useful to you.

Friday, August 10, 2012 11:56 AM

I suspect the irony he was referring to was your choice of words, that removal of the design view as "by design".

Paul Stork SharePoint Server
MVP Senior Solutions Architect: BlueChip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

Friday, August 10, 2012 1:56 PM

Hack: Data View Web Parts in SharePoint 2013

Hey everyone who is following this thread, I did figure out a hacky way to create data view web parts in 2013 using SPD 2010.

Laura Rogers
Rackspace: SharePoint Consulting
Blog: http://www.wonderlaura.com
Twitter: WonderLaura
Books:Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint
Using InfoPath 2010 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step

Friday, August 10, 2012 2:25 PM

Laura,

This is exactly why Microsoft is wing-clipping power users. When given an ounce of power, they quickly run to exploit it any way they can, even beyond its intended use.

DataView Web Parts are still there. No webparts have stopped working. There's no need to work around a missing design view in SPD2013.

To be honest, I'm starting to hope Microsoft will prevent users from using SPD2010 to build stuff in SPD2013.

Please understand that you are reinforcing Microsoft's need to take away the things you love.

.b

USPJ Academy - The World's First SharePoint University http://www.uspja.com/ Offering training and degrees for SharePoint Professionals

Friday, August 10, 2012 2:35 PM

But this is what is going to happen more and more. People are going to look for other solutions to do their regular jobs, and they eventually start experimenting with the code view. Which will cause more problems.

Friday, August 10, 2012 4:23 PM

Paul is correct. I was simply referring to the choice of words.

The product is called "Designer," the "Design View" was removed and the comment was that it's "by design."

It's ironic that this is where SPD ended up. You know... like rain on your wedding day, or a free ride when you've already paid... or 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife

- cawood

Edited by CawoodMVP Friday, August 10, 2012 4:44 PM humour

Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:06 PM

I completely and wholeheartedly agree with both of you. I use the design and especially split view all the time. I thought the notion for SP Designer was a tool for non-Developers! Since I am not a developer, going to code-only view is absolutely prohibitive ... I do feel like I am being cut-off at the knees ...

Friday, August 17, 2012 9:56 AM

8

I concur with many of the opinions on this thread - Microsoft have made a monumental cockup by removing the design view!

And in reference to those that say good on MS for doing this as it then stops users from messing up the SharePoint environment, well you obviously have not seen the real world.

It is prudent to manage which users have SPD and which don't. Those users that would likely only use SPD once a month - keep them away from it. I have seen countless time's where one of these users has messed up permissions because they "forgot" how to do it.

However there are people that need to use SPD on a daily basis to amend pages, customise styling, layouts etc and these I find are people in the IT department. And these are people that understand what a user needs from a solution in SharePoint.

We have brought in developers in the past that purely work in code and have created beasts of solutions where really something done in SPD out of the box would have sufficed and been far more efficient. If we will no longer be able to allow these business analysts to develop in SPD then we certainly wont be upgrading to 2013 from 2010 and will see what is in store for 2016.

SPD has always been a pretty unstable product but it has been the one product I rely on daily. Shame on you Microsoft.

Friday, August 17, 2012 10:08 AM

Hear! Hear!

+1

cheers, teylyn
www.teylyn.com

Friday, August 17, 2012 4:30 PM

Adding my name to the list of solution developers who will be greatly impacted by the change in Designer 2013. +1 to comments made by Marc, Laura, Jennifer, and dozens of others.

Daniel Glenn

MCITP & MCTS Office 365
MCTS SharePoint

http://InfoWorks.co
http://KnowSharePoint.com

Edited by Daniel-G Friday, August 17, 2012 4:31 PM sig

Saturday, August 18, 2012 6:48 AM

I agree with Marc and with Peter England. This is very alarming. SPD is the most valuable part of SharePoint to me. There are some who advocate building our business data / collaboration applications in SQL Server or other platforms. But we are able to responsively provide more integrated capability to users in less time with SPD than with Visual Studio or using other development platforms.

I am an engineer who learned to use SPD to get work (real business needs) done through SharePoint. I am building new DVWPs every day. I use design view to build DVWPs and I use split view to quickly locate code blocks for web parts and elements. Does Visual Studio replicate this manner of building the XSLT code?

I have not experienced anyone breaking things using SPD. I have witnessed Visual Studio development for things that would be simple with SPD, and taking longer to deploy.

Hampering customization will encourage companies to opt for platforms other than SharePoint.

Saturday, August 18, 2012 7:42 AM

4

I posted this comment earlier to a Blog post from a SharePoint MVP. It adds to the common trend here.

(The quoted statement was part of a paragraph written by Jeff Teper, MS SP VP as quoted in that blog post)

> We designed the new SharePoint UI to be clean, simple and fast and work great out-of-box. We encourage you not to modify it

It's a good (if frightening) quote.

Unlike many people, the sites I made did tend to use the standard UI as far as possible, because even in the earlier versions of SharePoint, that was a very clean looking (and usable) UI.

However, even given that basic approach there was still the need for some minor amendments to the UI because of company requirements etc. and apart from that there was often a need for the kind of additional functionality that DVWPs brought to the site in a controlled way.

In my words that was not "modifying" the UI, it was "tweaking" it.

It seems to me that Mr. Teper doesn't get the difference and in fact by making such minor tweaking impossible without code, he is in fact pushing people in the direction he says he wants to avoid - or in other words in the direction of sites where Visual Studio is in use to provide similar functions to those available out-of-the-box and while the programmer is at it to amend the UI for good measure.

Surely uncontrolled code is more likely to cause problems than non-code DVWPs where Microsoft has provided the DVWP code oob?

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Saturday, August 18, 2012 7:44 AM

Saturday, August 18, 2012 3:13 PM

One possible reason could be that Microsoft is trying to further open the door for 3rd party solutions and tools to strengthen the ecosystem. Perhaps the power-users today that create dataview web parts in their sleep, tomorrow will start dabbling in visual studio to create and release inexpensive SharePoint "apps" into the marketplace, where a noob can download, install, and configure just like a web part.

I know for me, while it has always been fun to tinker with javascript and code snippets you find on the web to get SharePoint to do something nobody thought could be done. But then when you have to deploy that same solutions 100 times, and each needs to be tweaked a little differently...it's not so much fun. I would much prefer a web part, or perhaps "app" in the new world, that I could easily drop on a page and configure.

That being said, once the SharePoint design view goes missing, I'm screwed :-D

Monday, August 20, 2012 12:32 PM

I initially assumed that this was due to a technical issue, and that it would be restored at a later point.

None of the possible "justifications" make any logical sense at all. If there was a case to be made for not using Design View, then there could be a setting disabling it, just as it is possible to disable SPD in its entirety.

How many of you have sent feedback to Microsoft from the SPD "Frown"? And what other means are there to get the message across? What about bringing this to the attention of the (online) press? I am thinking about CMS Wire, EndUserSharepoint, and then also any Microsoft-sponsored events that relate to SharePoint.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 9:49 AM

> What about bringing this to the attention of the (online) press? I am thinking about CMS Wire, EndUserSharepoint, and then also any Microsoft-sponsored events that relate to SharePoint.

My view is that it is too late and would thus be wasted effort.

My experience of earlier SP beta programs is that even relatively simple things weren't changed if they were reported only in the public beta phase. That was used only to correct major bugs.

[I reported incorrect sorting options for different languages in the earliest phase of the public beta for WSS/SP 2003. Those incorrect options were still there in the pre-public beta of WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 only that time I was able to report them as soon as SP MVPs got the code and they were fixed. Those were presumably fixable with simple table changes whereas adding Design View functionality back when it's been removed from the code will not be as simple.]

If MS had responded when sympmarc first brought this to their attention when SP MVPs saw the code, they might - just - have been able to fix it in time for the re-included Design View to be correctly tested. Now they wouldn't have time for that necessary testing.

Besides which, once MS has made this kind of "strategic" decision it seems to be virtually impossible for their collective mindset to confess that they were wrong. [Wondering if anyone has an example - for any product - where MS has confessed to having gone the wrong way - apart from Bob that is.]

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Tuesday, August 21, 2012 9:50 AM

Tuesday, August 21, 2012 5:34 PM

Well with the new App Model and how developers aren't even supposed to touch the sharepoint server anymore, it makes sense why the design view is missing. If everything is an app and hosted in a separate sandbox away from sharepoint internals, you should be be building new solutions that deliver HTML content only. Like web controls and javascript. Asynchronous solutions that have a fluid interface. If thats true, design view seems like a waste of space -- for App Model.

But there's still classic sharepoint -- sharepoint that runs side by side as 14 hive. Classic sharepoint that does mingle with the content database and does mess with the sharepoint internals and does coexist on the same server. That's still supported so Design View is still needed there. And thats still supported in SPD 2010.

I think it comes down to this. Sharepoint classic, side by side deployment of SharePoint 2010 solutions would require SPD 2010 and has design view. SharePoint App Model, a separate sandbox that does not interfere with SharePoint internals, requires SPD 2013 and doesn't have a need for web parts. These solutions are based on simpler content delivery mechanisms mostly HTML5 and javascript. These no need for Design View on these.

If you take that viewpoint, you can clearly see why Design View was removed from SPD 2013. It doesn't really belong with this new paradigm.

Brian Bedard, MCTS - pioneeringsharepoint.blogspot.com - Twitter:@tigertoy

Thursday, August 23, 2012 9:36 AM

I have to say that I have seen FAR more damage done by developers with not enough SharePoint knowledge, than by power users who know their environment..

I absolutely see the risks, but I still think this is a really bad move by Microsoft - enabling users is what SharePoint is all about!

Thursday, August 23, 2012 2:50 PM

http://blog.sharepointelearning.com/sharepoint-designer-2013-data-view-web-part-list-view-web-part-design-view-is-gone/

Sorry I'm late to the party. I have been meaning to get in on this discussion for some time. Marc and I had talked about this multiple times in the past (SPTechCon being the latest event we discussed this at). Like Marc and many of you all, I have been agitated about this change for a long time, but not have been able to publicly talk about it. Then when I could talk about it, I got extremely busy with other work stuff. Those of you who know about my background with SharePoint Designer, know what I mean when I say that this change in direction changes a whole lot of what I have been doing for many many years now.

I went ahead and finally made a long overdue blog post showing the visuals and impact of what exactly has changed with the absence of Design View:

Design View is not coming back and that's a fact. Now the question becomes: What do we do with all of the solutions that we have made using the Design View? How do you support it going forward? That's the Million dollar question on everyone's mind who is close to this functionality change.

Asif Rehmani-MVP, MCT. Co-author of books Professional SharePoint Designer 2007, SharePoint Designer 2010 and Real World SharePoint 2010. Check out our SharePoint 2010 Video Training Tutorials available at http://www.sharepoint-videos.com.

Edited by Asif Rehmani, MVPMVP Sunday, November 18, 2012 8:26 PM misspelling

Thursday, August 23, 2012 5:27 PM

Adding my name to the list of solution developers who will be greatly impacted by the change in Designer 2013. +1 to comments made by Marc, Laura, Jennifer, and dozens of others.

Daniel Glenn

MCITP & MCTS Office 365
MCTS SharePoint

http://InfoWorks.co
http://KnowSharePoint.com

Adding my name as well...hopefully MS is listening and will fix this before October! I feel it is many steps back for usability and giving power users access to make solutions.

Kim Frehe

Thursday, August 23, 2012 6:05 PM

+1000, It should be brought back. It will be greatly missed. Bad architecture can be introduced is so many places in SharPoint. Saying this prevents badly architected pages just does not make sense in the grand scheme of things. Its an essential tool for the enterprise.

Steve

Thursday, August 23, 2012 11:01 PM

Yes, certainly agree with everyone here that removing design view is big mistake. I am not a developer, we have no SP developers, just me (an IT Admin) and our non-SP web designer trying to do a little branding, workflow, and some make-things-easier-for-end-users stuff. Design View is critical to us. We are learning the code via split view. Visual Studio will never happen.

Um, if the true reason is in fact the stated reason that design view is not up to date as the current IE and cannot support new HTML 5 tags and CSS sheets, we landed men on the moon in 1969, can't the SPD team update SPD to work with the new stuff?

If the reason is that Microsoft wants everyone to use the web UI, well, using the web UI comes up way, way short in 2010. I have not had a chance to play with 2013 much but I did try to edit a page and I don't see much difference. Frustrating; even simple changes require SPD.

What about all the visual users (visual learners) out there, goodbye accessibility. I look at code and go cross-eyed.

As for users mucking up/breaking sites, SPD use falls under governance/training. If those are not in place a company has bigger problems, as the saying goes.

Joan

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 1:56 AM

This is a move in the wrong direction. SharePoint is sold to customers in terms of ease of use and ease of design. Dumping the design view from SharePoint Designer disempowers users and leaves a void.

I cannot agree with the decision to remove a premium design tool from the hands of users, leaving only a code view. What do they think we are, Linux users? Why not just replace the entire product with a popup that says “RTFM”? There is a word for this: Egregious.

Here’s a radical notion: deliver a product that allows users to safely design and publish web content to SharePoint using a WYSIWYG interface. Apparently Microsoft couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do this.

I frequently use SPD 2010 to manage and customize my sites. I enjoy having a GUI. I do not enjoy dipping into the code view, where one mis-paste can wreak havoc; you don’t have any way to tell how the page will render until you save/publish it.

I acknowledge that Microsoft is very unlikely to reverse their decision, especially given that this is a non-revenue generating product. I do think that their justification is absolute tripe, however: "Derp, no one uses Design view anyway." In reality, I'd argue that MOST SPD users use it for the WYSIWYG.

SPD has its flaws, to be sure. It's come a long, long way from its FrontPage roots (and I was very adept at FrontPage). Maybe its time has come at last. But why leave a void? Why is Microsoft telling us to keep our hands off? Is it intended to drive users to the App marketplace?

We are Windows users. We like to drag handles and click buttons and rotate gizmos. We are fiddlers. We do not like shrinkwrapped solutions. We're the kind of people who prefer to crack open the case and upgrade our own memory, thank you. We'd never take the computer back to the store, are you kidding?

We're IT admins and power users and analysts. We don't want to HAVE to hire a team of programmers to customize our farm. That's soooo... SharePoint 2003. We want to BE ABLE to do it ourselves.

Is it too much to ask?

Tuesday, September 04, 2012 3:29 PM

I suspect that the Design Manager in Publishing was expected to replace the Design View entirely. While the new Design Manager does a lot, it doesn't do DVWP/DFWP editing or WYSIWYG XSL generation for conditional formatting _and_ it's only available on SharePoint Server Publishing Site Collections.

That's sad, but I doubt that it will be added back to SharePoint Designer 2013. If for no other reason, it's too late in the product cycle. All the components are still there just not the Design View. So for now, I would suggest just using SharePoint Designer 2010 against a Web Part Page housed in SharePoint 2013. That'll buy you ~three more years.

Looks like an excellent opportunity for someone to publish an App for SharePoint that will provide a browser-based replacement for this functionality.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 8:16 AM

> I suspect that the Design Manager in Publishing was expected to replace the Design View entirely.

The fact that Design Manager is only available for SPS 2013 and not SPF 2013 and yet is perhaps supposed to replace something that is almost essential for SPF 2013 sites is unfortunately typical of both the way MS have always treated the products in the STS / WSS / SPF line and of the way MS have always (with a very few exceptions such as Mike Fitzmaurice) presented functions as if they were for the entire SP range while most of those presented functions have only been available in the more expensive of the two SPS / MOSS products.

Some things clearly never change.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links; book list): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book list): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Wednesday, September 05, 2012 8:24 AM

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 11:22 AM

There are plenty of things that Designer can allow users to do that they maybe *shouldn't* be able to do, but the ability to use Design view is not one of them. Everyone else has already said everything I would say, and better, so I won't reiterate the obvious.

Suffice to say: my job will now be MUCH MORE DIFFCULT and my value to my employer will be DECREASED. That's all I need to know to qualify this as a true epic fail.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 1:20 PM

Sympraxis Consulting LLC - Marc D Anderson's Blog - @sympmarc - jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) - USPJ Academy

It's the non-design uses of the Design View that are at issue here, IMO, and that includes the Split View. I'm not convinced that the Design Manager is going to be a step forward, but it's at least a way to do that part of the work. The other *development* tasks don't seem to have any options.

Still nothing from the good folks at Microsoft on my queries, here or using my supposedly privileged channels.

M.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 1:25 PM

Thanks Marc for keeping up-to-date on the status (even though there really are no new developments).

Any other MVP's or people with "privileged channels" have an update?

Edited by Daniel-G Wednesday, September 05, 2012 1:25 PM english

Wednesday, September 05, 2012 9:32 PM

I just finished a SP 2013 project without Design View. The removal of Design View added an unexpected approximately two-unnecessary-man-weeks to the project timeline. I can code a DVWP from scratch, but without a “preview” it just made development unnecessarily difficult.

MSFT: Please upgrade Design View to support SP 2013 or provide an alternate path to support at least Data View web parts.

Saturday, September 08, 2012 8:38 AM

I am surprised that people see SPD as such an important tool in enterprise environments. If you don't have multiple environments (test, staging, production) and you don't ever plan on upgrading to the next version of SharePoint then feel free to make as many SPD customisations as you want.

BUT...if you want to be able to reliably deploy to different environments, upgrade to the next version or have a workable disaster recovery process then you probably shouldn't be using SPD to customise SharePoint.

For me the argument of SPD vs Visual Studio isn't about "those stupid power users mucking stuff up" or "those .Net developers don't understand SharePoint", it is about whether you can 100% hand on heart say I can reliably deploy every customisation ever made to my farm to a new farm in a reasonable timescale if I ever needed to. As soon as you let power users start making SPD customisations you can no longer say that and you put your business at risk and SharePoint in a position that makes upgrading to the next version potentially more difficult.

I'm not sure if this is why MS seems to be moving people away from SPD but if enterprise customers have been using SPD then it is probably generating a lot of support calls. Possibly for the same reason that the recycle bin was introduced in 2007 (reduce support calls) MS is now encouraging people to move their customisations away from the SharePoint server.

We can whine about it if we want but if we are honest with ourselves we would have to admit that the risks we are taking with the way SPD is being used currently probably aren't sensible. They might be good for rapid solution delivery but not so good for the long term health of our SharePoint farms or businesses.

Sunday, September 09, 2012 8:49 AM

>I am surprised that people see SPD as such an important tool in enterprise environments. If you don't have >multiple environments (test, staging, production) and you don't ever plan on upgrading to the next version of >SharePoint then feel free to make as many SPD customisations as you want.

>BUT...if you want to be able to reliably deploy to different environments, upgrade to the next version or have a >workable disaster recovery process then you probably shouldn't be using SPD to customise SharePoint.

True, but only given the very severe parameters ("test, staging, production"; "deploy to different environments") you specify.

There's an awful lot of companies running SharePoint who don't have the need for such a correct (a la Content Management Server) set of servers to run it. The original SP architecture (unlike CMS) wasn't exactly conducive to doing so. There's also little point for instance in SPF 2010/2013 users taking this strict route and most of them won't (and most of them can't).

Yet those users too are also no longer easily to make "as many SPD customisations as (they) want".

Besides which even those user companies with a beautiful setup of testing, staging and production machines are occasionally forced to make quick fixes by user pressure and although those fixes in such circumstances no doubt will in time be replaced by more permanent and correct solutions, it's still very useful to have the option of doing them - for instance over a long holiday weekend when the programmers aren't available - in a semi-controlled way (by looking in Split View at the results of a code change before saving it, for instance).

Mike

(Very much in favour of controlled and controllable environments but in my experience company political pressures have often meant that what I considered to be correct (and fail-safe) environments were shot down for cost reasons.)

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Monday, September 10, 2012 5:22 PM

It would be interesting to know how many people commenting would consider themselves to be working in enterprise scale environments who don't at least have a SharePoint test server. In my opinion if a company is investing in a SharePoint team (i.e. has staff on payroll with the word SharePoint in their title) then they should probably also be investing in the infrastructure so I wouldn't view having multiple environments as a "severe parameter".

My point didn't just apply to deployment though, I also mentioned upgrade.

Maybe I should just make my point more bluntly - if you don't adhere to a set of considered engineering principles (e.g. how are we going to maintain/upgrade this) when creating your SharePoint solutions then expect trouble later on down the road.

Just because Microsoft have made it easy to hack away at your SharePoint environment doesn't mean we have to; although I understand the political pressures that have made SPD solutions so popular. This is a good example of what happens when managers and business analysts end up making technical decisions. ;-)

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:41 AM

Two comments.

1. There's a vast difference between the "multiple environments (test, staging, production)" of your first post and the "who don't at least have a SharePoint test server" of your second post. I was of course responding to the environment types specified in your first post.

2. The number of enterprise SP installations is a small percentage of the total number of SP installations (Note for the sake of clarity I am NOT refering to the number of *users* (clients) of SharePoint in those installations) and while those relatively few enterprise intallations have the staff to be able to cope with the removal of helpful functions like SPD Design View those relatively many non-enterprise installations usually don't.

(While it's not surprising that Microsoft favour the environments that bring in the most money, they are clearly forgetting that small SP environments can grow to become larger - and thus for Microsoft more profitable - environments. Whether or not this will even happen if those initial small steps are made much more difficult is something that ought to have been considered but which clearly wasn't.)

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Tuesday, September 11, 2012 9:46 AM

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 1:59 PM

Sorry - I should have been clearer in my original post. By multiple environments I meant: an environment that has at least 2 out of the following of test, staging or production. So a test farm and a production farm = multiple environments. By that definition there is no vast difference in what I was describing. Apologies again if that was not clear.

I do agree that SPD Design View is helpful for small organisations who do not have in-house development skills, up to a point. It helps them to develop solutions rapidly in the short term. Unfortunately because they don't have people in-house asking the right questions about how things will be maintained and upgraded this means they end up in a situation where it is difficult to maintain those solutions and it is difficult to upgrade to new versions of SharePoint.

I don't think this is a tooling issue, the removal of design view is really a bit of a red herring that masks a deeper issue in the SharePoint eco-system - the real issue is a lack of engineering skills and awareness. Ie. "You don't know what you don't know."

Edited by Aidan Garnish Tuesday, September 11, 2012 1:59 PM

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:06 PM

Sympraxis Consulting LLC - Marc D Anderson's Blog - @sympmarc - jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices) - USPJ Academy

There is no "one size fits all" answer to governance. SharePoint is used by organizations with from one person to hundreds of thousands, and the way each of those organizations uses it is at their own discretion. There are organizations that only make changes via the UI and SharePoint Designer that have been running fine since SharePoint 2003, even with upgrades.

There's no "right" answer to all of this. Microsoft often misses this entirely, too. They care most about the enterprise-class customer, but the rest of the customer base often needs different things and those things aren't wrong; they are just different.

If you know what you are doing, you are consistent, and you use the tools wisely, SharePoint Designer-based solutions are absolutely deployable across environments. It just takes a bit more focus and work.

So let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. People use SharePoint Designer to build real solutions that solve their business problems extremely well. Removing the Design View and Split View simply will make their jobs a lot harder.

M.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:48 PM

First of all, if they are truly going there as Asif has mentioned they need to change the product name from Sharepoint DESIGNER to Sharepoint EDITOR (I was going to say Sharepoint Notepad ;p) and I can understand both sides having lived through supporting MS ACCESS Applications built by Power users (heck I was one myself but at least I stuck to Excel and left Data stuff to the DBA's until I became one myself) . To be sure, the big problem is losing the power user ability to customize your own lists and workflows without code or without understanding the code. Microsoft seems to be raising the white flag of surrender saying they can't come up with a way to do it that is supportable, portable (i.e. multi browser) or governable (it's either on or off rather than nuanced bits) I really would like to see a COMPLETE Blog from the Sharepoint team to explain exactly the issues and how they came up with the decision ... we might at least respect that. And if there is a secret Third Party working on something, dammit, come up and say so! :) They should not keep information like this close to the vest THIS close to their release. (wow ... I could have sworn I have posted before but hey, this is a good time as any to start new :))

Ralph Rivas - Chicago

Edited by Ralph Rivas Tuesday, September 11, 2012 2:48 PM

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 3:11 PM

"If you know what you are doing, you are consistent, and you use the tools wisely, SharePoint Designer-based solutions are absolutely deployable across environments. It just takes a bit more focus and work."

Agreed, but that isn't how most people use or view SPD - instead it is seen as a short cut to a cheap solution. If a company aren't ready to invest the time in a "proper" development process (using VS or SPD) then that same company is unlikely to put in the "focus and work" to use SPD well.

I also agree that there is no "right" answer but if the removal of these views edges companies down a more virtuous path then maybe in the long run it will be a good thing.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 4:31 PM

Conspiracy Theory:

Someone on the MS Office team notes that the SharePoint Designer product is a loss leader and decides that, rather than spending money to enhance SPD (for example, to support HTML5), instead it would be better to cripple the product so that the SharePoint community will abandon it. Also, the SharePoint team all but pushes people to other HTML-based editors like Dreamweaver, so that these pages can be imported via the web interface.

The minority who remain will be hardcore web designers and developers (but most devs will prefer Visual Studio anyway). That way, MS can release another "SharePoint Design" tool and start charging for it again.

Disempowering users is not the way to make friends. It does, however, make financial sense.

Edit: when I say "cripple", I mean it. There are lots of by-design deprecations that make SPD a much less useful tool. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/sharepoint-server-2013-known-issues-HA102919021.aspx#_SharePoint_Designer

Edited by poortatey Tuesday, September 11, 2012 4:35 PM

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 5:19 PM

Nice theory, but they used to charge for the product and could do so again without bothering to first make it useless and then thinking up a new name.

There's a SP precedence for first restricting something; then removing the restriction and then putting the restriction back that they could refer to ("free" database size for WSS 2.0, WSS 3.0 and SPF 2010) as justification.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Tuesday, September 11, 2012 5:22 PM

Tuesday, September 11, 2012 5:44 PM

"Nice theory, but they used to charge for the product and could do so again without bothering to first make it useless and then thinking up a new name."

That works too: they could simply be planning to retire the SPD product line altogether. Sure, they are keeping it around for workflow maintenance and such, for now, because there's no 3rd party product that can do it. But maybe the eventual goal is to have everything manageable via the browser (perhaps in the next version after SP2013). They do intend to move everything to the cloud, after all. Why not make SharePoint more like WordPress?

Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:17 AM

I read about missing design view but now I wanted to see .. I just can't believe it.

Why? Really Why Microsoft? I am telling you LOTS of people will stop using SharePoint Designer 2013 because no Design View any more !!! Shouldn't SharePoint be easier for use for the none IT people who goes to SharePoint Designer, I want to see how they look when they hear this news :-/

I think Microsoft will return it back after this they hear our feedback in this thread

Edited by Mai Omar Desouki Wednesday, September 12, 2012 9:35 AM

Thursday, September 13, 2012 7:15 AM

Let me also join in to voice my disappointment over this change. I am "the SharePoint guy" in a relatively small company, with a small staff and budget for developing new SharePoint solutions. For us, SharePoint Designer has been an important tool, and losing the design view will impact our possibilities negatively. Hope to see a reversal or that someone else will create add ins or apps to support a design view feature in the near future.

Friday, September 14, 2012 4:12 PM

Very True, I am very big fan of data view web part, and manipulated it in almost every possible ways.

from Joining as many as 6 lists to creating Sliders, and many more animation, image rotator etc ..

Hope they have something better for us

:(

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 8:22 AM

Although almost every opinion has passed the comments by now, I wanted to reply anyway. There are a few things that come to mind when I read this post and the comments below.

First, I think this decision is perhaps influenced by the fact that Microsoft was forced to remove the IE HTML rendering engine from other products. Remember Outlook stepping back in time when IE HTML rendering was replaced by the Word engine? The new bits and pieces HTML5 adds to the game, including the uprising of JavaScript, jQuery and other frameworks, mean a big job including support for all that in the designer. You might say: "we don't need support for those things", but you know people are going to ask for it when you don't include it.

JavaScript and jQuery are getting more and more important in SharePoint development every day now, and a lack of good debugging support would be considered a big miss in development. That's right; development. Go around the blogs and read DVWP posts. More and more are people messing around with scripts and other tricks to add functionality to pages. And sometimes that works out, sometimes it creates a mess. And when there's a mess, there's usually a big, unmanagable mess because you have no clue where all the weird scripts are located, used and so on. And those scripts can severely damage your farm, we all know that.

In all of the above comments, the new app model only surfaces a few times. Guess what: times are changing. The days of the webparts are counted and the new app model is what Microsoft is betting on. So why would they put an enormous effort into getting a designer view working for old style development they want to so evidently phase out? To me it only makes sense that they're trying to push development to the app model, and eliminating the designer is a pretty effective way of doing so.

As for current sites built upon data view webparts: there's no reason why you should immediately upgrade to SharePoint 2013. Your 2010 environment will be supported for quite some years and when your users are happy at this time: why upgrade? And suppose you really, really need the 2013 bits: you're old DVWP-style solutions will still remain working in 2010 without any problems as far as I know. Perhaps even SPD2010 will be supported (including the designer)? It's just for new additions to the platform they'd like you to start using the new app model. I kind of understand where they're coming from.

MCTS Web Application Development, SharePoint enthousiast.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 9:23 AM

The problem with your argument here (final paragraph) is that Microsoft wants people to upgrade to the new version of their products as either it brings new cash into their coffers or it justifies for the company concerned the buying of software assurance from Microsoft.

It is therefore clearly not in Microsoft's interest that people stay with the version of SP that they have because of a lack of some functionality when using the next version of the product.

Another thing is that the costs for Microsoft in upgrading SharePoint itself no doubt were many times the cost of upgrading SPD with the functionality you suggest is the reason for them both of not upgrading SPD and of removing functionality from it.

Or to put it another way, large investments made by the SharePoint team will bring in much less revenue to them because of relatively small cost savings made by the (Office?) SPD team. On a company-wide scale something is wrong here.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Tuesday, September 18, 2012 9:24 AM

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 9:47 AM

Of course Microsoft wants you to upgrade. But they also know that many customers won't upgrade in the first few months, perhaps even years after launching, anyway. So as long as you're happy staying on 2007 or 2010, you'll still be supported for quite some time.

You're also right about the second part; the cost for upgrading SharePoint is undoubtly much greater than the cost for SPD. But the strategy here is cloud; everything is build to go cloud. SharePoint Online will grow closer and closer to the on-prem version and ultimately the differences will disappear completely.

And compared, a 2013 app compared with a 2010 build solution is much more cloud ready. DVWP and other SPD-made solutions are known to be dangarous, giving you options to affect your farms performance. And when you're hosting a lot of tenants in a cloud based environment, the last thing you want is users messing up performance.

I think for Microsoft, the cloud-ready approach of 2013 (as demonstrated with Napa tools for instance) weighs in much heavier than the few customers who'll stall on upgrading their 2010 environment to 2013 because of a missing designer.

Someone else already mentioned the start button example in Windows 8. Just because a lot of users complain about the missing button doesn't mean they'll put it back in. It's missing for a reason, because of a vision. And if that means some users won't upgrade, that's too bad. I find that a pretty ballsy decision to make. It reminds me of Steve Jobs (taking a risk here...) who pushed through some things in quite a similar way, even though a lot of people disagreed at first.

MCTS Web Application Development, SharePoint enthousiast.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:06 AM

Hi J Siegmund,

Regarding trying to open SharePoint 2013 using SharePoint Designer 2010, yes works and opens but you can not open design view.

I really wanted to try but its definitely won't be opened in 2010 as in 2013, which is the thing that makes sense.

And about that mess you were saying, I 100% agree with you but I am one of the Consultant who saw many clients messing with there master pages even if they took copy !

But I am disappointed because there are people who don't mess with it and know exactly how to use it.

But you know what, this will relief the Consultants somehow.

But for the End User, he will think many times before opening SPD 2013 and before even upgrading.

Edited by Mai Omar Desouki Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:20 AM

Wednesday, September 19, 2012 10:35 PM

We can all (almost) agree that it's not a very good idea to remove the design view from SharePoint Designer 2013. What we need to find is the right arguments to convince Microsoft to keep the design view and a lot of them has allready been mentioned here.

From my point of view removing the design view is going to throw the Citizen Developer at least 5 years back.

He is the kind of user that is going to suffer most together with the IT-departments, who now have to hire in consultants to do what the Citizen developer used to do using the design view...

Furthermore the devtime is going to be extended - up to 14 days I can read in one of the posts here...I'm not surprised but my more than 15000 users are going to suprised when the delivery time is going up like a rocket, we start invoicing them using external programmers and we have to remove SP Designer from their image.

If Microsoft deside to keep it this way it won't be long before we see Nintex, K2 or some other major player developing a tool that these users can use to satisfy their needs.

Put my name on the list of people voting for keeping the design view in the SP designer.

Edited by Per Birk Wednesday, September 19, 2012 10:36 PM misspel

Friday, September 21, 2012 12:04 AM

I agree with Marc.

Bjorn Furuknap (at http://blog.furuknap.net/i-was-wrong-kill-the-sharepoint-designer-design-view#comment-4491) lauds the removal of Design View from SharePoint Designer 2013, saying: "Now you’re either a developer and you write code, or you’re a user." Sorry, Bjorn , but in my opinion you're dead wrong. Taken to the extreme, that statement suggests we should go back to writing in machine language. I believe the genie is out of the bottle and you'll never get it back in.

Despite the fact that empowered power users may cause problems from time to time, I have to believe that the increase in productivity they have experienced far outweighs the problems they cause. Once they've experienced what's possible, they'll find some way around trying to de-empower them (OK, so "de-empower" is not a real word, I know. But its prettier than "emasculate").

For instance, I work in a Fortune 10 company that requires that all SharePoint server-side development be done by the company's approved external provider (a capital expense). In today's climate, capital expenditures are hard to get approved. The company has over 25,000 SharePoint site collections, ALL managed by power users, with a sprinkling of client-side developers thrown in. I suspect 99% of the business units in the company do what ours does -- hires one or two or three SharePoint developers (as contractors -- opex dollars) to develop in SPD. A thriving SharePoint User's Group has grown from the bottom up to help business user's (many of whom cannot properly even be called power users) get value out of SharePoint so they can get more work done in less time. With the company announcing layoffs of another 16,000 workers within the last few days, getting more done with less is more critical than ever.

It is notable that our standard OS is Windows XP, and we are still waiting for SharePoint 2010 to be rolled out. Large companies tend to lag behind in technology because they like to keep risk, and costs, low. Yet, they still ask workers to do more work in a shrinking workforce.

Instead of dumbing down the tools to discourage power users from being efficient, Microsoft should make the tools smarter to assist power users in doing things the right way, instead of the wrong way. Or, they'll watch someone else steal away their market share who realizes that empowered power users are a game changer for business.

Keith Hudson

Friday, September 21, 2012 6:11 PM

Don't forget that it's a developer preview. None of this stuff is out yet. HTML 5 is pretty new and the necessary changes to the rendering engine to full support HMLT 5, XSLT 2, CSS 3, IE 10 (coming out with windows 8), etc etc is a lot of work.

I'd place my bets on it not being there because they wanted to get the developer preview components in peoples hands before they finished incorporating the new rendering engines into SPD 2013's code.

I'm not saying it will be added, as there is no indication for or against that argument that I can find. However it would make sense for it to show up later at launch or a CU.

Edited by Ryan T Mann Friday, September 21, 2012 6:14 PM

Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:04 AM

> the necessary changes to the rendering engine to full support HMLT 5, XSLT 2, CSS 3, IE 10 (coming out with windows 8), etc etc is a lot of work.

... and it would require a lot of testing too.

So it's hardly likely to be in RTM without having been in a "beta" version.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:08 AM

Monday, September 24, 2012 4:13 PM

This is very Sad. <o:p></o:p>

I cannot begin to image the impact of this on thousands of organizations that are perfectly happy building quick and easy solutions using SPD. They may not be perfect, as SPD itself, but for sure with a much higher ROI and business value that many large "best practice" developments, deployed with lengthy change control cycles that leave people wondering when the "new" app will be available!!!. On this one I think that the competitors may be happy (Oh wait, are the any?).<o:p></o:p>

It seems to be that Microsoft in much more interested now in SharePoint as a cloud service than on premises and they do not want to take the risk of "Power users" messing with designer. What about if they fix the problems in SPD, or may be leave SPD as an option for those of us, and our clients, that will still use SharePoint on premises? Let us decide if that design view showing “Not so perfect code” makes good business sense for us. <o:p></o:p>

With this move, SharePoint is becoming less “Agile”. And that is a bad thing. I love this product and bet part of my career to it, as have many people that recommended SharePoint for their organization, but now the reward is that they need to be less agile, spend more money in tools (i.e. VS???) and get a lot of training on VS to see the preview of a page, or that error in XSLT?.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 4:01 AM

Second that!

Edited by Z-KC Tuesday, September 25, 2012 4:03 AM

Saturday, September 29, 2012 7:23 AM

I am not SPD expert, but whatever little I can do with SPD...design view certainly plays great role in it. In certain scenarios, it flags error immediately in design view which helps a lot. So I can see productivity hit without Design view.

Hopefully, MS is working on advancing design technology so that we can have our design view back...if not in RTM then in some service pack....

Thanks, Parwej http://parwejpathan.blogspot.com

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 7:53 PM

Well said.

I've been describing Microsoft as quietly brilliant since 2008 for having released such an incredibly powerful tool which just about anyone in an organization can approach, learn, and use to develop complex business process solutions that can completely ignore organizational hierarchy and cause true meaningful collaboration (i.e., what does it mean to have something with a medium priority on our team? we can discuss it because changing it takes three seconds).

That level of empowerment is key to a truly agile and connected workforce. It's a genuine thrill for me to hear a customer start a phone call with, "so I was up late last night playing around with Designer and wondered..."

Perhaps I've been wrong. Perhaps Microsoft's issue was not that it built something incredible that could really change an organization but didn't know how to market it that way - perhaps, rather, they actually aren't aware of how people who actually like this product, and champion this product, use this product.

When Marc "DVWP this" Anderson and Laura "yeah I taped it" Rogers are flustered, I'm concerned.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 8:45 PM

4

I wonder what the record is for the longest TechNet thread? Anyway...

This change seems to be three years too early (i.e., one release too soon). To deal with the "MySpace problem" and get away from users breaking things with Designer, the clear solution is to provide something better.

From what I'm reading (e.g., the comments on http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=1034) that's not happening yet.

- cawood

Edited by CawoodMVP Wednesday, October 10, 2012 8:53 PM clarification

Thursday, October 11, 2012 11:07 AM

Yes, long thread.

While I agree and disagree with many of the comments here - It's all a learning opportunity. Live with it and move on.

A prime challenge with any software version release is new learning, different ways of working, adapting to constraints and limitations. Time to learn about Design Manager, time to learn about marketplace, the app model, how to integrate appstore functionality and cloud based services- with this release the learning curve is pretty big and this change adds to it.

I view this that Microsoft are narrowing their support remit in a space where integration challenges are becoming more profound and this has potential to reduce breakages. They only have so much resource to commit to ensuring tooling is all encompassing and can be supported. It will be nice to see how other tool vendors react and what tooling leaps in to fill any voids. We do have a very passionate an innovative community in the SharePoint and Office arena. I would not hedge my career on MS fixing this specific problem. It's the skill we as technologist have, to adapt to technical evolution and learn new methods and approaches.

Being able to do that increases your value as technologist, I'm going to bitch about it but embrace the change while I do it.

It's fairly moot anyway, it ain't coming back.

http://sympmarc.com/2012/10/11/sharepoint-designer-2013%E2%80%B2s-missing-design-view-its-official/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sharepoint-designer-2013%25e2%2580%25b2s-missing-design-view-its-official

Regards John Timney http://www.johntimney.com

Edited by John Timney MVPMVP Saturday, October 13, 2012 8:22 PM

Monday, October 22, 2012 6:03 AM

I totally agree I don’t understand Microsoft going to update or going to back. I also face one problem on client side when I went to client side, client required that he wants document library view same like in 2003 and when I found in 2010 that was not available I shocked and that time we found solution and we played with XSLT using designer and that time design view completely supported us to find if, for etc for make view according customer requirement and now in 2013 missing design view Microsoft restricts developers… I also agree with LauraRoqers

Regards DILDAR-SharePoint Developer

Tuesday, October 23, 2012 7:58 PM

I use code snippets like that all the time. I'll drop them into Content Editor Webparts, and then export the webpart. I'll give it a memorable name, and save it in a toolbox type of list as an attachment. Then I can just add the webpart to the page I need it on. Nice and easy.

Friday, October 26, 2012 7:53 AM

>From what I'm reading (e.g., the comments on http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=1034) that's not happening yet.

I'm surprised there haven't been more comments in this thread on that post.

My reading of it is that it is very much a <rude word> you post.

i.e. short, abrupt, "we are going to ignore everything anyone has said on this" and as such very typical of today's Microsoft (or to be fair typical of some parts of today's Microsoft as other parts have realised that Microsoft no longer is top dog).

Clearly however with such an attitude prevalent in the SPD team, we can forget about any corrections to SPD 2013 in the direction most of us in this thread want.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Wednesday, October 31, 2012 1:06 PM

> Clearly however with such an attitude prevalent in the SPD team

Just in case anyone is still reading this thread, there's an interesting article on Windows 8 on a desktop from the ExtremeTech people.

The second page of it (here: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/138847-the-metro-desktop-interaction-in-windows-8-is-an-absolute-train-wreck/2) has the sub-title

"The astounding arrogance of Microsoft"

and the phrases

"After covering the Vista Capable lawsuits four years ago, I feel safe guaranteeing that this decision was hotly debated at Microsoft. Whoever overruled it threw users under a bus."

It's the same concept as with SPD 2013 - we're right and everyone else is wrong - and just like the lonely voices in 2010 within Microsoft SP who said you can't first give users an unlimited free database system in one version and then take it away from them in the next, the voices here saying you can't remove Display View were clearly outvoted by the arrogant guys who knew best (even if they really didn't).

P.S. Oh, and John "Time to learn about Design Manager" Timney, Design Manager isn't available for SPF 2013 so the advice to accept and move on doesn't really cut it for people moving on from SPF 2010 or WSS 3.0 (etc.) or for people new to SP who want to start off easily.

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Wednesday, October 31, 2012 1:12 PM P.S. added to get in reply to earlier, recent post without a new entire post

Wednesday, October 31, 2012 2:25 PM

Could the real Mike Walsh that I know move the reply regarding Windows 8 technology to a Windows 8 thread? Lastly, this thread is getting out of control especially considering that now the replies that are coming in are repeated opinions. We already know your opinion from the first reply, no need to repeat it a second and third time.

Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:38 AM

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35491

The entire thread is in effect about Microsoft's complete unwillingness to listen to informed opinion after making a grave error in their internal thinking.

This arrogance is what links the Windows 8 post (where the term wasn't used by me) to the rest of the thread. I found it interesting that following a period where Microsoft people realised that there was a world outside Microsoft (such as their belated awareness of Linux) that needed to be catered for there now appears to be a return to trying to dictate that includes but also goes beyond the SharePoint sphere.

As for moving the post, you assign to me powers which I no longer have.

P.S. In case people haven't seen it the RTM version of SPD 2013 is now available here

SP 2013 "FAQ" (useful links): http://spf2013faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
SP 2010 "FAQ" (useful links, book lists): http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx
WSS3/MOSS FAQ (FAQ; Books and Links) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/default.aspx

Edited by Mike Walsh FIN Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:54 AM P.S. added. Product added to MS Downloads site 30th October 2012

Friday, November 02, 2012 7:46 PM

Seems pretty easy to see their thinking here - they want to be Apple. Apple tells you what you need and if you disagree, then clearly you're not cool enough to own their products. Cool people like Metro on their PC. Cool people like using the browser to brand their site. You do want to be cool don't you? Don't you?

Monday, November 12, 2012 8:41 PM

What I dont understand is why SPD2013 is so heavily geared towards having a design view that Microsoft would choose not to have one?

A large number of the ribbon buttons are related to adding/editing elements in the design view, like the table ribbon with its various add row/column before/after etc. Is it just Microsoft being lazy and not removing them or MS thinking we are lazy and want a button so we dont have to move up/down a few lines and add our own <tr> tags? :P There are plenty of other examples of buttons which work in code view but were really originally intended for the design view. However, the best example of left-over design buttons has to be the skewer-click button, last time I checked code doesn't overlap? Oh but elements in design mode do!

I found a "Design" button in the options menu which can be added to the quick launch bar / custom ribbon group. It doesnt do anything (yet!) at least not that I could tell and it doesnt really even have a proper button icon. Could it be that they are still working on the rendering issues and haven't released it yet? Or are they just in the process of removing it all still?

I really hope the design view does make an appearance in SPD2013, I'm trying to learn how to code and it really helps me get my head around it all!

Nick

Edited by NickBarnes Monday, November 12, 2012 8:52 PM

Thursday, November 15, 2012 7:13 AM

I'm not developer and use design mode very rarely, but this option from category 'must be' not 'nice to have'.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 3:22 PM

The SP developers with whom I work are overloaded and are grateful for trained, enthusiastic power users who can handle their own conditional formatting, column width changes and the like. As a "no-coder", I have a great dialogue with the developers and I discuss my ideas for solutions with them all the time - so there aren't any mindless "users" running around "breaking things" here. Both the developers and I would prefer a scenario where I can use SPD and Design View instead of sending a ticket every time I want to make minor changes.

Ok, Microsoft gives a reason for the change. Many support it, though it appears that many more decry it. What bugs me is that Microsoft is still providing training (for example, in the No-code Solutions in SPD course), and pushing companies to move to SP2013 - with no mention of the Design View removal, and without providing an alternative view for no-code work in SPD 2013.

Fortunately, workarounds are springing up already, and I feel confident that more alternatives will appear before my company moves to SP2013. I am glad I work with developers who understand that both they and "no-coders" are vital to SP success!

Wednesday, December 05, 2012 2:10 AM

Another point about removing the design view is that you lose that RAD capability. If I need to work with a specific piece/part/ or data Item and can quickly find it in the design view, click it then minimize and work with the code directly as needed. For all given purposes why even use SPD 2013??? Shoot we can just use note pad right? Same thing but without all the overhead. Go back to web 1.0. The design view was never WSIWYG but you could get to various pieces quickly and that piece aspect right there speeds up things immensely especially if your given a web page you never worked on and asked to fix quickly. A lot of times Visual Studio is/was just overkill for simple edits, tweaks, and changes but it (using VS XXXX) will become the norm. Good for us developers but man the end users better start brushing up on their Visual Studio skills. I know why not make Visual Studios 2012 'Text Studios 2012' too, shoot just think of the overhead you save.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 9:10 AM

I don't know anyone who is a "pure" SharePoint developer - unless you work in a big software company or consultancy you often find you cannot just down tools when someone asks you to move away from Visual Studio. I use a mixture of Central Admin, PowerShell, Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer every day. SharePoint Designer is not just an end user tool. In its 2007 version it was a great general-purpose Text/XML/HTML/CSS editor (with design view!!) - better than NotePad++ and lighter weight than Visual Studio. Plus it managed CSS better than VS 2008 as well, with that nice pane with all your CSS classes and ID's sorted order. I still keep the 2007 version around for this purpose.

In SPD 2010 they removed the ability to edit files outside SharePoint so it became less useful for that purpose but still fine for working with SharePoint files. At least you can still use the Data View web part for sophisticated rendering of lists using XSLT - and I can't believe any end-users want to dive into XSLT. Even as a developer I have to take a deep breath when I have to work with it - it's not easy to figure out sometimes. Design view really helps me during the initial stage of trying to get the XSLT in a data view web part to do what I want. Just save the page and you can see straight away if it looks about right in the design view.

Microsoft, please put it back! And while you're at it can we have back the ability to edit files from the file system as well?

Lars Nielsen http://discoverlars.wordpress.com

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 3:37 PM

Sympraxis Consulting LLC - Marc D Anderson's Blog - @sympmarc - jQuery Library for SharePoint Web Services (SPServices)

Lars:

You can actually open any file with SharePoint Designer 2010, you just have to open them manually using Open with from the Right-Click context menu. It's a bit of a PITA, but it works.

All of your other points: amen.

M.

Friday, December 28, 2012 11:45 AM

Hi,

I want the checklist of what are all the functionalities(workflows,branding etc) developed using SPD 2010 can be upgrade to SP2013 as it is.

Thanks in advance,

Abhijeet

Thursday, January 03, 2013 12:27 PM

Dear designer of Sharepoint Designer

I have read all the comments and they all point to same things all over and over again. Sharepoint became from very good product for power user to unusable product. Yes, of course I can waste my time by writing code and yes I do know XSL and yes how the hack should I ask someone in accounting department of any company to learn the things I know, or any department for that matter. What should I say to same those people that decided to use it for creating simple views? Not nuclear physic type views but simple view that uses two xsl filters..should I organize class for them and spend the rest of my life teaching them XSL, HTML 5 and all the technologies involved because two years ago I explained them that changes are easy and WYSIWYG. Answer me mr. architect of new SP designer should I tell those people that they are too stupid now that new SP is out and if they want to create something new they have to understand something thats completely out of their knowledge. Yup they can learn, but they won't, and they will not buy new SP, and only people that don't need Designer might buy it, or just big companies that have teams of IT just for SP will buy it, but others will not. It was easy, now its hard, unpredictable and impossible for most. Change it, and change it now because Sharepoint is incredible so why the **** did you do this?? I will not tell any specific reason why it is bad. Just spend a morning reading comments on this page, spend a moment understanding this unbeliveable change, buy technology (you don't even have to create it) to show design and implement it. If you still don't get it go to Microsoft HR and show them this line and ask them what it represents:

If you don't get fired and they smile back in ununderstanding please tell them that the answer is power that they will never learn to use. They could have used it before but not anymore. Wake up! Change it!

A.

Wednesday, January 09, 2013 4:01 PM

At a previous place I did some SharePoint work, we used SharePoint Designer 2007 and 2010 quite a bit for workflows, page design, etc. We found that on fairly complex pages we had to hide the design view because it would sometimes hang the designer or it would crash. We ran network traces to examine what was happening and saw lots of WebDAV and http activity and found that when SharePoint and/or the network had a high number of users, some requests would fail. We would have to close the design view and just work with the code until the SharePoint farm an/or network were less busy. So for myself, it's not too much of a problem but other SharePoint developers and power users that relied quite heavily on the designer (when it was working).

What is the recommendation for them? Is there anything better in the works ???

Nick

Wednesday, January 09, 2013 5:15 PM

Agree with Marc. Unfortunately this is one of many questionable, confusing decisions Microsoft has made regarding SharePoint 2013. They seem to be doing everything they can to not make existing SharePoint applications able to move forward. We develop packaged business applications on SharePoint and SharePoint Online, and it is almost like Microsoft does not understand that SharePoint is a platform which must transition forward rather than a whole new development platform with every version change. If you were developing android or iphone widgets or apps that is one thing, but when you are developing applications to automate business processes (either in-house or packaged) limiting the ability to upgrade, it limits the abililty to run your business leveraging SharePoint as a platform. Another challenge is the ever changing SharePoint Online underlying features, they are there one day and gone the next.

Sunday, January 13, 2013 8:55 PM