SharePoint Designer 2016 alternative

SharePoint designer and its  life can never end, if you are one of those who have been using it for designing sites here is bad news for you, Microsoft has discarded SharePoint designer 2016 so there is only supported version for SharePoint 2016 is SharePoint designer 2013.
 Ideal environment for Microsoft SharePoint designer is - ultimately first you get SharePoint 2016 and have windows server 12 r2 or windows 2016 and database sql server 2014 and finally you can have old SharePoint designer 2013 that you have been using  for SharePoint server 2013 sites.
As Microsoft announced So SharePoint designer is being removed from SharePoint 2016 but info path has been clubbed for  consultant to design any UI using InfoPath form designer as traditionally  it’s been used for it.
But when you spend time with technology so you get hands on and develop skill set which helps anyone to work with that technology easily and smoothly- there are number of people who has been attached with SharePoint designer technology so Microsoft says – anyone wanted to use designer for SharePoint so they can use SharePoint designer 2013 earlier version of designer with SharePoint 2016 so if you have installed SharePoint 2016 on premises version then you can easily use old SharePoint designer 2013 version with SharePoint 2016
Ideally you can design best workflow as you have been designing it with earlier workflow engine in 2013 you also can tweak with master pages that you designed in earlier SharePoint designer version now you can enhanced them too.

There might be some feature they don’t work of SharePoint designer 2013 while working with SharePoint 2016 but ultimately you can use design manager,  vss tools to manage master pages and other pages. Microsoft might release some more updates regarding this and you need to upgrade the entire mechanism.

SharePoint Designer 2016 is Dead:

1)      SharePoint designer 2013 is supported with SharePoint server 2016 so no more SharePoint designer 2016 for SharePoint server 2016

2)      You can use Visual studio as SharePoint designer 

3)      InfoPath 2013 is still supported with SharePoint 2016 if you had designed UI in InfoPath 

       so these are supported  with SharePoint  2016

So final line is SharePoint designer 2016 alternative is SharePoint designer 2013 and InfoPath 2013 because InfoPath is supported as of now.

Microsoft SharePoint designer 2016 is not being released but design manager is there, animated illustration depicting info about SPD

SharePoint Designer 2016 Discarded but few more things:

If you are working with SharePoint online then you have very few chances to customize that portal, you can use app to brand you online site.
There is not much option you have with SharePoint online customization as well using SharePoint designer.

You will see this page will be updated with latest details of SharePoint designer 2016 if there is any so please keep visiting this page for latest info.
You can reach out for any SharePoint designer consultancy support or help.

Alternatives to sharepoint designer

You can use powerapp to design custom form within sharepoint, power app is suite of apps will help you design custom forms using list and design custom app on top of it. there are many connector ready to connect your data with other apps and manipulate it using sharepoint


If you are working on windows and sharepoint then you need to install powerapp studio you can browse Microsoft site to download it.

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MS SharePoint Designer 2013

We have written a lot about share point designer before but this time we thought there should be more information for share point designer written as this is becoming very import for all designers who are working with share point technology.
Microsoft initially introduced FrontPage for editing webpages earlier then discarded that product and people might have worked with expression web for creating web pages and then Microsoft introduced SharePoint designer which was corresponding tool for SharePoint for designing SharePoint sites.

And probably Microsoft has changed direction when people have seen Microsoft is launching Microsoft edge with windows 10 would be used for designing and enhancing SharePoint sites.

Microsoft is coming up with new ideas of browsing and enhancing it with Microsoft edge with windows 10 browser – you can change and enhance your web experience through thin client which
is Microsoft edge browser where you read content and write as well.

So again web designer still thinking to work with the right tool, when it’s coming to enhance and customize existing SharePoint site so everyone ending up with ms SharePoint designer 2013 because people are working with sharepoint 2013 but how they can customize site easily.

Ultimately people are using SharePoint designer 2013 but it does not have WYSIWYG editor so web designer still finding some other ways to design sites.

MS SharePoint designer 2013 with Dreamweaver:

You can use sharepoint designer and dreamweaver  for designing master pages  or if you wanted to design a header in any html editor and take them into SharePoint designer and other component and publish them in your SharePoint site.
You have choice to design your header or social bar with any html editor, it could be Dreamweaver
Ideally you can find some slider on net and download it and open it in Dreamweaver

One of the major components of sharepoint designer 2013 is design manager with the help of design manager in SharePoint 2013 you can channelize your master page specific to mobile or desktop or ipad so once configured different master pages will be used for different channel.

Ideally you can use Dreamweaver for designing header as master page and import it using design manager so the entire header layout will be converted with design manager. These headers will be treated as master page and will be converted automatically from design manager.

This means you add social bar in Dreamweaver and update it by time to time in dreamweaver and change will be reflected in SharePoint once you have uploaded all design file into associated libraries in sharepoint then this bar up and running.

If you have multilingual site so you must be having 2 default.html 1 for English and 1 for Arabic and 2 more files associated with them as .master file each and if you have header navigation so must be having header.html and header.master. But you have to edit your html in dreamweaver for any header you have designed there and changes will be synced automatically because you have uploaded all html files from design manager and SharePoint just created .master file for all those header pages.

You can design any social bar or navigation in that header and convert them into master using design manager.

So as of now you can understand how to design navigation and where to design it obviously in dreamweaver or you can design consistent look for all pages as master page that will be used as master page later. One more thing which is very important to explain you can also design navigation in SharePoint 213 for that you don’t need SharePoint designer or Dreamweaver.

But still there is a need of slider in SharePoint for your site to be ready and launch. You can do it in sharepoint 2013 using content search webpart which is in content roll up category  add that webpart into your content query web part.

And if you want to display images as slider for that SharePoint add a content search webpart, this web part never shipped in earlier version of sharepoint now you can find it in webpart gallery just add it in your page where you want to display images as slider. And select its property change query and define image library and define path there. And in display template section select slide show and select item as large picture. When you finish adding webpart on your page then you will see a slider running on your SharePoint site page. But for social navigation or header you can use dreamweaver and design that area there.

Why SharePoint Designer has no design view

There is no design view in SharePoint Designer 2013 only code view is available for you to just insert your code and develop workflow.
If you look back and see what type of IDE SharePoint Designer 2010 had so it was quite easy for people to customize such stuff, user had code view, design view and split view for customization in SharePoint Designer 2010 where as design view and split view have no standing in SharePoint 2013 Microsoft has discarded design view in SPD 2013– this removal including design view and split view affecting people who are editing web parts and master pages in spd 2013.
How you can cope under such circumstances so the solution is- Microsoft says you could use visual studio for such kind of activities means for branding you need to work with VS.

Why SharePoint Designer 2013 does not have Design View:

As you know Microsoft have removed design view from SharePoint Designer 2013 but there is another solution for this problem, Microsoft says – if you want a WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get) editor for branding in SharePoint designer 2013 so you can use expression web and expression design and once done with branding then import that html files into SharePoint 2013 server  using new design manager and further you take it from there.
We have not used data driven control in expression web but you will find data source control in expression web. So people who are feeling that SPD 2013 does not have any design view for data view web part can try expression web where you will find various web parts. Though you can do many things by inserting code in a code view windows in SharePoint Designer 2013 but design view had different features as per power user point of view.

Reasons for Discarding Design view from SPD2013:

Microsoft says- SharePoint Designer 2013 does not have a design view because it’s obsolete technology and has no more support of HTML5 tag and some css tags so it’s better to discard it. So now using sharepoint designer 2013 you can edit UI and change master page but with code, you can do a lot.

Tip: you can design Visio diagram and give life to that diagram by importing it into SharePoint designer 2013 and build business rule using SharePoint Designer 2013 with that diagram.

If you find something new in expression web so please comment and let us know.

updated:
A web designer can use Dreamweaver as  SharePoint WYSIWYG tool. because you can edit your header or navigation there and SharePoint designer can generate .master file against these html versions side by side.

Alternatives to sharepoint designer

As of now there is only solution if there is no design view and still want to design no-code forms then you left with one choice which is powerapp. It's a part of office 365 or you can download it from microsoft its name is powerapp studio which is used to design custom forms using lists in sharepoint.

Power app is sophisticated service from Microsoft to create manage custom business app across different platform. Power app can be used to develop workflow form, apps using sharepoint list you can do a lot in it.

Power app is a suite of app or collection of apps, services and data platform that help you design rapid app using it.you can hook up with your underlying data be its online or on-premises it will connect you and design app for using that data.

If you are dealing with online sharepoint or on-premises then power app will help you design business app using it..

you can browse our site to learn more about power app and microsoft workflow and form and automate your business processes.