Microsoft: SharePoint Designer 2010 is not Meant to Design and Publish

In case you didn’t know, according to Microsoft, SharePoint Designer has nothing to do with designing SharePoint? Then why is it called SharePoint Designer? Good question. The simple answer is: for the same reason that you have to click Start to shutdown Microsoft Windows. Just kidding! I really don’t have a clue why Microsoft would name a product then tell us that the name is meaningless and we should ignore it. You would think a name like SharePoint Editor would have made more sense.

One thing is for sure, SharePoint Designer will no longer be called SharePoint Designer in future because the name makes no sense at all. That’s just my prediction. According to Microsoft:

“SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for users to work on — not to design and publish — SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 web sites.”

Some people may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 to be a crippled version of FrontPage, even though when it comes to coding SharePoint Designer is a much better product. Others may consider SharePoint Designer 2010 a crippled version of SharePoint Designer 2007, which is perhaps a better way to describe it. Microsoft has removed a lot of features in SharePoint Designer 2010. Here is a partial list of what’s missing or changed.

• You cannot import a Web site from another server or file location in SharePoint Designer 2010.
• You cannot create, edit, or publish a disk-based Web site, or work with remote Web sites in SharePoint Designer 2010. Elements in the SharePoint Designer user interface that supported working with disk-based Web sites, such as the Use Microsoft ASP.NET Development Server preview option, have been removed.
• You cannot perform server administration tasks such as backup and restore, content migration, or other management tasks that affect and entire Web site in SharePoint Designer 2010. These operations should be performed in Central Administration.
• SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint Foundation 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010. It cannot be used with earlier versions of SharePoint.
• In Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and previous versions of Microsoft FrontPage, you could use the Microsoft Script Editor (MSE) to add text, edit HTML tags, and edit any Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) code in a data access page. MSE also provided IntelliSense features for script creation and editing. You could also use the Script Editor to view your page as it would appear in a Web browser. Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 does not include Microsoft Script Editor.
• The Contributor Settings feature has been removed from Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010.
• The Single Sign-On (SSO) method of authentication has been removed from SharePoint 2010 and replaced by the Secure Store Service.
• Powerful cascading style sheets (CSS) layout features have replaced layout tables feature in Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010. The tools related to creating and modifying layout tables have been removed from the SharePoint 2010 Designer user interface.
• If you open a Web page that contains an existing layout table in SharePoint Designer 2010, the layout table functions correctly. However, you cannot use SharePoint Designer 2010 to insert a new layout table.
• Themes created in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are not compatible with SharePoint Foundation 2010. If you are upgrading from Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 to SharePoint Foundation 2010, you can use Visual Upgrade to continue to use sites in the old user interface.
• The Hyperlinks view is removed from SharePoint Designer 2010. You can use the error-checking features in SharePoint Designer 2010 to check for broken links, unused pages, cascading style sheets usage, and master page usage. The Recalculate Hyperlinks command has also been removed.
• Because of the changes to data management, the following database features from Microsoft FrontPage and Office SharePoint Designer 2007 are not supported in SharePoint Designer 2010:
  – Database Interface Wizard
  – Database tab of the Site Settings dialog box
  – Database Results Wizard
• Because SharePoint Designer 2010 is designed for working with SharePoint sites, and these servers already have the necessary underlying code installed, an FTP client is not required and is removed.
• Customizing pages (also known as “unghosting”) now requires higher permissions than in the previous release: By default, only Site Collection Administrators can customize pages, master pages, and page layouts, or use the All Files view.
• The functionality in Dynamic Web templates has been replaced in SharePoint Designer 2010 with master pages.