Microsoft has released Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2012, a new collection of tools designed to simplify the process of creating applications for Office 2013, Office 365 and SharePoint 2013. The new release allows Visual Studio developers to use Web technologies to create office productivity apps that complement Microsoft’s software. “Prior to Office 2013, development for Office was done through … add-ins and templates for Office using .NET. This technology is also fully supported on Office 2013 with the introduction of .NET Framework 4.5 support,” explained Microsoft’s Sean Laberee. “The difference is that the new model allows for developers to use their Web skills, including HTML [and] JavaScript to write apps that extend their Office applications.”
The tools are available for free, and they include templates for creating task pane apps (apps appear in the task pane of an Office application), content apps (apps that appear inside of the document’s content), and mail apps.
