Khizery said
if you are planning to buy this book , do not buy unless you make sure it has CD in it.
i bought this book and find out it came with out CD and now its useless , i will return this book very soon
Jerry Saperstein said
Like many tech book series, Microsoft's "Step by Step series has had its hits - and not infrequent misses. On the whole, I have found the Step By Step books to run toward the superficial, which sometimes is acceptable and sometimes not. "Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step by Step", however, is one of the best I've seen in this series to date.
Microsoft SharePoint is a complex platform. Newcomers get confused between the various incarnations of SharePoint. Further complicating matters are the interplay between SharePoint Designer and Microsoft's Visual Studio. Bottom line is the SharePoint universe is complex. Author Penny Coventry deals here with Office SharePoint Designer 2007 and what it does. She warns at the outset that the reader must have access to a server running Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Server 2007. I have seen reviews of this book criticizing the lack of a sample site on the accompanying CD. The author is clear that she does not provide the commercial software for this: if you want it, you have to buy it or otherwise have access to a running site.
Another issue is that this book is intended for the novice user of SharePoint Designer 2007, a product that has its roots in Microsoft's now discontinued Front Page 2003 product, which was intended exclusively for website design. SharePoint Designer is, in the final analysis, a programming tool with web design capabilities. Thus, the user with a programming background, especially in Visual Studio, who is looking for an introduction to SharePoint web design will be much more at home with the content of this book than will a web designer with no programming experience who is trying to learn about SharePoint itself.
If you have no experience in with SharePoint, programming SharePoint or web design, this is not the book for you.
Author Coventry, much to her credit, explicitly points out that SharePoint Designer actually has little usefulness for the average SharePoint worker. It is intended for the jobs that can't be accomplished using only a browser, but don't require the full power of Visual Studio. Ms. Coventry also maintains an excellent website in support of the book in particular and SharePoint in general. The URL is listed in the book.
With all those caveats and conditions out of the way, it's time to discuss the book itself.
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007 Step by Step" is unusually well done. Its flow is well designed, beginning with a detailed history of SharePoint Designer, some information on SharePoint and how it interacts with Designer. And then it is on to doing things using SharePoint Designer 2007. Once again the potential reader is warned: if you don't have access to a server running SharePoint, this book will be of little use to you.
Coventry does a good job of explaining how SharePoint Designer works. Much of what she says will be familiar to a large degree to someone with experience with web design tools like FrontPage or DreamWeaver, but the information about SharePoint will be new.
Overall, a solid introduction to SharePoint Designer, but make sure you already have some understanding of SharePoint and access to a SharePoint server before you pick this one up.
Jerry
Snowiii said
The book provides technical assitance but is light on actual functionality demonstrated with examples. Also found that about 8 to 10 pages were printed blank or part of the page was missing..Must have had a bad printing day and their QC didn't catch it.
N. Eckstine said
It's well written. I can understand it and do the exercises. The one issue I have is that on page 83 On creating a Web Part Page by Using a Browser, step 9
Open the [...] team site in Sharepoint Designer.
As far as I can tell this site doesn't exist. I am not sure why something like this is included in an instruction book. It makes learning the content a lot harder.
but I would reccomend the book as one of the better way to get into sharepoint and managing sharepoint sites.
Lavanya Ranganathan said
This book teaches how to use the designer, covers the usual basic stuff. Elaborate procedures on important topics like Business Data Catalog are missing. This is more suitable for people who are a novice in sharepoint.
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