As successful as the Windows 10 launch has been, it’s arguable that Microsoft’s future is tied to Office and the cloud. The notion of Windows as a platform for Microsoft has shifted to creating platforms within Office and on top of its Azure connected cloud. Microsoft continued the ‘extension of platforms’ conversation at its developer conference in late April, opening up Office related apps to popular third party plugin-ins such as Uber, Paypal and Boomerang.
Today, Microsoft is further developing the idea of Office as a platform with the introduction of Office UI Fabric. Microsoft’s Office UI Fabric is the company’s responsive, mobile-first, front-end framework for developing web experiences that look and feel like native Office plugin-ins.
With Office UI Fabric you can apply simple CSS styles to make your web applications look and feel like the rest of Office. The styling takes into account typography, color, icons, animations, responsive grid layouts and localization.
Up for general availability, developers can now get their hands on Office UI Fabric through GitHub. Office UI Fabric is designed to work across Office Clients where Office Add-ins is supported, which include Windows desktop, web browsers, Mac desktops and iOS on iPad. Exploring Office UI Fabric within GitHub also offers developers great visuals in the documentation to better help explain what is available in all of Office UI Fabric. In addition to dropping the documentation into the GiHub repository, Microsoft also has its own Office Add-in UX Design Guidelines that discuss Office UI Fabric designs at a higher level.
Microsoft is encouraging curious Office developers to head over to https://github.com/OfficeDev/Office-UI-Fabric to try out Office UI Fabric.
