Office web App, Hello World - Agave

Office Web App

Hello world

Lastly I got chance to explore office web app. During my exploration I found it difficult to get all items, even for helloworld at one place. So trying to sum up here –

Prerequisite –

·         Office 13/15 – download here - http://superuser.com/questions/449923/office-2013-offline-installer

·         Install visual studio 2012

·         install Visual studio 2012 tools to create office web apps

All the packs are available in 32/64 bit versions.

Once you install all these you are ready to create your first web app –

Screen below shows ‘file-> new ->

 

 

 

Screen 2, after you click “OK” -

 

 

So office web app is nothing but HTML5 and javascript. The manifest.xml, keeps in information about your app. For all the old programmers –

Few Observations

1.    Office web App is html, so no COM and COM+ object.

2.    Essentially it is all about cloud / azure. Every new product/ enhancement is keeping this flavor. Which enables end user to work seamlessly from any device.

This changes the deployment options – The four possible deployment options are –

·         Market place (which is now a days de facto for almost every customization in MSFT)

·         SharePoint 2013 app catalog (wow!! finally I understood why app catalog in SPS 2013)

·         Exchange server for mail apps

·         Local folder deployment.

All this good so far – but I now with this much move to cloud I am puzzled –

How far this is going to help or where it will end?

Is that one day we will return to our local PC?

 

For more information about office web app follow MSDN blogs –

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officeapps/