Microsoft Office 13 Embraces Web Development

With the upcoming release of Microsoft Office 13, Microsoft is encouraging developers and administrators to use open Web technologies such as JavaScript, CSS and HTML to build their add-on apps. Microsoft wanted to modernize the way the platform is accessed by developers, said Richard Riley, a Microsoft director in the Office division. They have made some of the most significant changes on the developer side of Office in the last 15 years.

For the past 20 years, Microsoft has offered VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) as a tool for developers and administrators to add additional functionality into Microsoft Office. While VBA will still be offered in the next version of Office, now available in preview form, Microsoft will also offer the Office Cloud App Model, which uses Web standards such as HTML, CSS, OAuth, REST and Microsoft's own OData. The company endeavored to apply this model consistently across Office as well as for SharePoint, for both the hosted and in-house versions of these products. "We focused on having a consistent set of APIs, so a lot of apps built for Word can also run for Excel," Jones said.