Book excerpt: Now that Microsoft has made SharePoint Designer a free download, thousands of organizations are adopting it to design state-of-the-art SharePoint sites and solutions. In SharePoint® Designer 2010 Unleashed, Microsoft MVP Kathy Hughes brings together all the information you need to make the most of this powerful tool. Using realistic examples, you are guided through all of Designer 2010’s capabilities, presenting best practices drawn from her extensive experience. First, Hughes quickly reviews the SharePoint 2010 concepts and tools that SharePoint Designer 2010 users must know to be effective. Next, she introduces SharePoint Designer 2010’s revamped interface, shows how to use its core features, and calls attention to its most powerful new improvements. You’ll walk step-by-step through styling and designing sites that offer advanced functionality and consistent branding. Next, you’ll master SharePoint Designer 2010’s toolsets for data integration and workflow development. This book will be invaluable to every user or potential user of SharePoint Designer, including: Web designers, information workers, software developers, system administrators, and IT managers. Kathy Hughes is a Microsoft MVP for SharePoint Server with a Masters Degree in interaction design from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Hughes trains and consults on SharePoint, focusing on design, usability, and customization. She contributed to multiple SharePoint Server 2007 books, and authored a comprehensive five-day SharePoint Server 2007 Designer course used by Mindsharp and its partners worldwide. She speaks regularly at Microsoft events including TechEd Australia and Office DevCon Australia. Get started fast with SharePoint Designer 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Customize SharePoint sites and content with CSS, Web Parts, master pages, and themes Work with site templates Create and adapt content types, columns, lists, and libraries Quickly build new content pages and page layouts Incorporate media, including Silverlight and images Configure RSS, REST, SQL Server, and other data sources Integrate external content types and lists via Business Connectivity Services (BCS) Authenticate data sources and troubleshoot data integration problems Extend the ribbon with custom actions and leverage the dialog framework to enhance the user interface Use SharePoint Designer 2010’s built-in ASP.NET controls Extend site functionality with the XSLT List View and Data View Web Parts Modify out-of-the-box list forms, or build new ones with InfoPath 2010 Adapt Designer 2010’s workflows or build entirely new ones Category: Microsoft® SharePoint® Covers: Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 User Level: Intermediate–Advanced ON THE WEB: Download all examples and source code presented in this book from informit.com/title/9780672331053