12

Designing Apps

What’s in this Chapter:

1. SharePoint-hosted Apps

2. Cloud-hosted Apps

3. CSS for Apps

4. Autohosted Apps

5. Chrome Control

SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 introduce a new app model fit for the cloud. In this new app model you can write code in any language, framework, or platform that you choose. This is possible because your app does not actually run on the SharePoint server. The core design principal in SharePoint 2013 is that no user code runs on the server. This chapter teaches you what you need to design and brand apps that look and feel like the SharePoint site on which they are hosted.

SharePoint Cloud App Model

In the past, you could write full trust applications, sandboxed solutions, and applications that ran on the client, either WPF or mobile devices. Although full trust applications and sandboxed solutions (including Silverlight) are still supported, they are not the future direction of SharePoint development and are deprecated in Office 365.

The key to the SharePoint app model and the flexibility it delivers comes from the fact that the code is not running on the SharePoint server. That means the SharePoint server is free to change as frequently or infrequently as the SharePoint product team wants to with less impact on your app. This is especially important as SharePoint Online in Office 365 becomes a more popular way that users deploy SharePoint. If your app is not running on the SharePoint server, where is it running? The answer is any place ...

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