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 like 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. "We have made some of the most significant changes on the developer side of Office in the last 15 years."

"We saw that people were building a lot of internal and consumer solutions as Web applications because they were easy to deploy. Just set up a server with some HTML pages and everyone could go and get that" app, said Brian Jones, principal group program manager for Microsoft's Office solutions framework team. "That's the model we followed." Read more...