Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 39: Using Microsoft Office InfoPath with SharePoint Products and Technologies 1039
■ Design mode is a WYSIWYG environment for developing form templates.
Every form a user fills out is based on a form template, which is created in
design mode. In design mode, you can view a form’s underlying XML Schema,
drag controls onto a form, set data validation and conditional formatting, and
preview your forms to test their appearance and functionality. You can build a
custom form from scratch or customize existing sample forms. Figure 39-2
shows InfoPath in the design mode, with an open form template for the
sample form.
F39XR02
Figure 39-2 InfoPath in the design mode
To enable data capture that is optimized for end users, InfoPath provides flexible
views of the abstract data structures of XML. This approach uses the XML paradigm
of separating the data in a document from the formatting. These flexible views
are based on Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLTs), which enable
the content of the editing views to be organized differently than the structure of the
XML document. Views show the XML document as nested field groups containing
text fields and other user interface (UI) controls. Within a form template, you can
define multiple views for your form.
When designing a form template, developers define many elements, including
the form’s structure; the types of controls on a form; the form’s data validation rules;
the views that define the layout of data; the default content of the form; and what
users can and cannot modify when filling it out.
In InfoPath, the collection of fields and groups that define and store the data
for an InfoPath form is called a data source. Form fields contain data, and groups