Office Developer Conference

The latest developer technology for writing “smart client” applications was on view at a Feb. 2005 Office Developers Conference. In smart client applications, a custom client built on Outlook or another Office application accesses corporate data via Web services. Microsoft believes that smart client applications are superior to browser-based applications and hopes that smart client development will expand the market for its client applications. However, the conference did not clarify the somewhat complex technology roadmap for Office development.

Highlighting VBA Contenders

The conference mainly focused on the current generation of developer technologies that have sprung up to replace Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the built-in development environment and programming language which remains the most popular way to develop applications with Office clients. However, the conference highlighted some future plans for Office developer technologies, including the following:

Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). VSTO enables developers to create Word and Excel documents and InfoPath forms that include application-specific logic (such as data validation code) running under the .NET Framework. VSTO 2005, due this year, will enable developers to test Word- and Excel-based clients from within the Visual Studio development environment. It will also provide new tools and simpler APIs for accessing and updating application-specific data embedded in Word and Excel documents.