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Building an App for Office in 7 minutes

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When I speak to developers about building Apps for Office, I’ll often build an end-to-end app from scratch to illustrate the ease in development. I can usually mock up most scenarios in 5-20min. How so quick? Apps for Office leverage standard web technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, making most web developers an instant Office developer. I've had such success building apps on the fly that I thought I'd use this post to record that demonstration. The app I'll build is called “Rhymes for Word”, a simple task pane app that:

  • Subscribes to selection changes in the Word document
  • Reads text selections from a Word document when they change
  • Queries an online service for rhymes to display in the task pane
  • Allows the user to write a rhyme back into the word document

Although it is silly scenario, it illustrates several key concepts of Office apps. I've listed rhyme service endpoint, you you are welcome to follow along and build your own app.

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkdryPVk0R0]

If you want to build the Rhymes for Word app on your own, you are welcome to use my rhyme service and follow the video OR download the complete solution:

Rhyme Service:
https://rhymeservice.azurewebsites.net/Rhymes.svc/GetRhymes?text=WORD

Completed Solution:
https://1drv.ms/18ArOUo

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2015
    This is great. Looking forward to seeing more of these.

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2015
    Well done! I've hesitated looking into the new app model because I didn't want to sit through a lengthy course. Now in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee I've added another tool to my arsenal.

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 21, 2015
    The comment has been removed