Slashdot Mirror
Office 15 Development To Go JavaScript, HTML5 For Extensibility
mikejuk writes "Programmers have had to put up with Microsoft dithering over Office development for a long while. The macro language VBA has been on its way out ever since .NET was introduced and yet it is still the only macro language available. Now it looks as if Microsoft plan to put JavaScript and HTML5 into Office 15. And how do we know this? By reading job ads to discover what projects Microsoft is hiring for."
HTML pages are documents. JavaScript is a full-blown programming language inside documents. It makes good sense.
You would be surprised how much business logic companies tend to squeeze into office documents, especially excel documents. I'd go as far as saying most of the world runs on excel sheets + VBA. Horrible but true.
You probably didn't know that Tools > Macros >Visual Basic Editor is the world's most popular IDE.
There are full blown Win32 applications that run out of Excel spreadsheets.
Crazy, but true.
I find it far more likely that this has something to do with Office 365: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/online-software.aspx
"The urge to fly from modern systems, instead of moving through them to even greater, fairer things is, I think, an indi
I highly doubt Microsoft would get rid of VBA. It is the evil and glue that keeps customers locked in and gives PHB's who hate I.T. woodys who want to develop things quick and dirty in Excel rather than a real IDE.
Windows 8 has a problem with MS Office. If you notice closely in those video's the pretty tiled Metro UI loads but the demonstrators have to open the Windows 7 gui to actually open Excel.
So MS wants Office 15 to have a tile UI which needs HTML 5 and Javascript. I could be wrong, but I did find that pecular and in the demo videos and wondered if it was intentional that Corporate America would prefer the old GUI or if MS did not update the GUI code for Office yet.
http://saveie6.com/