2017 UPDATE: if you are looking how to use SharePoint Designer 2013 with SharePoint Online / 2016, then please check out : “There is no SharePoint Designer 2016, but you can still use SharePoint Designer 2013“.
If you followed the social activity on the web ‘post ignite’ you may seen that SharePoint Designer may be killed off in SharePoint 2016. See Ben’s tweet after a session he attended :
Is this for real? If so, what’s going to replace it (if anything). I suspect this is just part of the general move to stop the amount of ‘customisations’ that customer’s currently do in SharePoint. Microsoft can’t maintain and support these long term (as it shackles innovation in the product), so I think it’s probably a good thing. There are often other ways to achieve the same thing in most cases.
What do you think? Will you miss it?
I, for one, will miss SPD. I use SharePoint Designer primarily for writing workflows. We’ve also used it for same branding changes. In SP2007, I created a lot of data views with it. I’m still learning to create them with code only in Sp2013.
Does SPD have issues? Yes, I don’t deny that. However, for the workflows I’ve written in the past 7 years, it’s been more than adequate to the task.
