Excel behaviour in an app

[Greg Keogh]

Folks, I'm wondering how people in here might tackle a technical problem
we're about to encounter. People here often come up with surprising
lateral-thinking ideas.

We'll soon start on an app rewrite so it runs on all brands of tablet sized
devices. We've been evaluating many development tools and languages and so
far it looks like Xamarin is in the lead. Our technical challenge is to
create Excel like behaviour in the app in the most realistic way possible.
We want to load an XLSX file, display formatted cells and charts, updating
cells and saving the changed document is a nice-to-have.

There are no cross-platform native controls that mimic Excel, but there are
web/JS products like Google Sheets
<https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets/?hl=en> and
GrapeCity's SpreadJS <https://spread.grapecity.com/Products/SpreadJS/>
which look like great candidates. They are of course HTML5 based, so they
would have to be embedded in the apps in browser controls. I'm not
normally that keen on "hybrid" apps that borrow web rendering, but I've
used Google Charts in a phone app and the result was acceptable.

Any ideas or comments on this problem of getting Excel behaviour in native
apps would be most welcome.

Thanks
*Greg K*

Re: Excel behaviour in an app

[Joseph Cooney]

Looks like it is on their roadmap for ios and android.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-plans-to-bring-office-add-ins-to-android-sometime-later-this-year/
https://www.thurrott.com/office/3256/office-mobile-apps-to-gain-add-in-capabilities-in-2015

Judging by the examples they list, I think it probably CAN make REST calls.

Joseph

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Greg Keogh  wrote:

> Would it be possible to use excel, and do whatever 'special' stuff as an
>> add-in? Not sure if that is even a thing on office for android/ios.
>>
>
> Dunno, but then our app would cease to exist as a recognisable thing and
> would become an Office add-in. It's in interesting idea nevertheless, as it
> turns the whole problem inside out and we would market a version of the app
> as an add-in. If .NET authored Office add-ins can make REST calls then it's
> possible. Sadly, I doubt if it'd work on iOS or Android though -- *GK*
>



-- 

w: http://jcooney.net
t: @josephcooney

Re: Excel behaviour in an app

[Joseph Cooney]

Would it be possible to use excel, and do whatever 'special' stuff as an
add-in? Not sure if that is even a thing on office for android/ios.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 9:10 AM, Greg Keogh <gfke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Folks, I'm wondering how people in here might tackle a technical problem
> we're about to encounter. People here often come up with surprising
> lateral-thinking ideas.
>
> We'll soon start on an app rewrite so it runs on all brands of tablet
> sized devices. We've been evaluating many development tools and languages
> and so far it looks like Xamarin is in the lead. Our technical challenge is
> to create Excel like behaviour in the app in the most realistic way
> possible. We want to load an XLSX file, display formatted cells and charts,
> updating cells and saving the changed document is a nice-to-have.
>
> There are no cross-platform native controls that mimic Excel, but there
> are web/JS products like Google Sheets
> <https://developers.google.com/google-apps/spreadsheets/?hl=en> and
> GrapeCity's SpreadJS <https://spread.grapecity.com/Products/SpreadJS/>
> which look like great candidates. They are of course HTML5 based, so they
> would have to be embedded in the apps in browser controls. I'm not
> normally that keen on "hybrid" apps that borrow web rendering, but I've
> used Google Charts in a phone app and the result was acceptable.
>
> Any ideas or comments on this problem of getting Excel behaviour in native
> apps would be most welcome.
>
> Thanks
> *Greg K*
>



-- 

w: http://jcooney.net
t: @josephcooney

Re: Excel behaviour in an app

[Greg Keogh]

>
> Would it be possible to use excel, and do whatever 'special' stuff as an
> add-in? Not sure if that is even a thing on office for android/ios.
>

Dunno, but then our app would cease to exist as a recognisable thing and
would become an Office add-in. It's in interesting idea nevertheless, as it
turns the whole problem inside out and we would market a version of the app
as an add-in. If .NET authored Office add-ins can make REST calls then it's
possible. Sadly, I doubt if it'd work on iOS or Android though -- *GK*

Re: Excel behaviour in an app

[Joseph Cooney]

So, build the REST API, build an excel add-in, build a basic app. Anyone
that complains that the basic app isn't excel-like-enough, tell them to
just use excel.


On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Joseph Cooney 
wrote:

> Looks like it is on their roadmap for ios and android.
>
>
> http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/04/29/microsoft-plans-to-bring-office-add-ins-to-android-sometime-later-this-year/
>
> https://www.thurrott.com/office/3256/office-mobile-apps-to-gain-add-in-capabilities-in-2015
>
> Judging by the examples they list, I think it probably CAN make REST calls.
>
> Joseph
>
> On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Greg Keogh  wrote:
>
>> Would it be possible to use excel, and do whatever 'special' stuff as an
>>> add-in? Not sure if that is even a thing on office for android/ios.
>>>
>>
>> Dunno, but then our app would cease to exist as a recognisable thing and
>> would become an Office add-in. It's in interesting idea nevertheless, as it
>> turns the whole problem inside out and we would market a version of the app
>> as an add-in. If .NET authored Office add-ins can make REST calls then it's
>> possible. Sadly, I doubt if it'd work on iOS or Android though -- *GK*
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
> w: http://jcooney.net
> t: @josephcooney
>



-- 

w: http://jcooney.net
t: @josephcooney

Re: Excel behaviour in an app

[Greg Keogh]

>
> Looks like it is on their roadmap for ios and android.
>

I just spoke to the guy running this project and mentioned the idea of the
app as a plug-in, and he said it's already partly been done, it's a working
experiment that wasn't released. A few years ago they used VBA to call a
COM server and fill sheet data. I doubt if it will work like that any more,
so I ran a few quick searches to see just how to write modern Office
plug-ins and I got utterly confused by the results which mention VSTO as
well as other unfamiliar products and (my favourite thing) ... JavaScript
-- *GK*

RE: Excel behaviour in an app

[Grant Castner]

Devexpress has a spreadsheet control - 
https://demos.devexpress.com/ASPxSpreadsheetDemos/Default.aspx or 
https://demos.devexpress.com/MVCxSpreadsheetDemos/. 
 
You would probably still need the browser control for the apps.
 
Cheers,
Grant


Grant Castner
Phone: 0458 770 749
Twitter: https://twitter.com/grantcastner
LinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/pub/grant-castner

 
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 10:10:16 +1100
Subject: Excel behaviour in an app
From: gfke...@gmail.com
To: ozdotnet@ozdotnet.com

Folks, I'm wondering how people in here might tackle a technical problem we're 
about to encounter. People here often come up with surprising lateral-thinking 
ideas.
We'll soon start on an app rewrite so it runs on all brands of tablet sized 
devices. We've been evaluating many development tools and languages and so far 
it looks like Xamarin is in the lead. Our technical challenge is to create 
Excel like behaviour in the app in the most realistic way possible. We want to 
load an XLSX file, display formatted cells and charts, updating cells and 
saving the changed document is a nice-to-have.
There are no cross-platform native controls that mimic Excel, but there are 
web/JS products like Google Sheets and GrapeCity's SpreadJS which look like 
great candidates. They are of course HTML5 based, so they would have to be 
embedded in the apps in browser controls. I'm not normally that keen on 
"hybrid" apps that borrow web rendering, but I've used Google Charts in a phone 
app and the result was acceptable.
Any ideas or comments on this problem of getting Excel behaviour in native apps 
would be most welcome.
ThanksGreg K