I came across an interesting question on SharePoint StackExchange today.
The poster reported an issue with SharePoint Designer 2013 where the List View Tools tab isn't showing up when clicking on a XsltListViewWebPart or anywhere within the webpart code. This is particulary annoying because some of the most useful commands like Filters, Parameters, Sort & Group, not to mention the essential Customize XSLT, are all contained within the List View Tools tab and hand-writing the Xml/Xslt code you get when using the UI is not the funniest thing in the world.
I've always thought that SharePoint Designer is one of the most embarrassing crappy piece of software ever written, which caused me countless hours of frustration, but this is a bit too much. They should have dropped it altogether, not just mutilating it by cutting out the designer view. Anyway, enough ranting.
Here's a "quick and dirty" workaround to get the beloved List View Tools tab back.
