Microsoft Shifts from Proprietary to Open Source with SharePoint Framework

Finally Microsoft SharePoint Framework (SPFx) General Availability tools are available! But what value will it add to SharePoint Development Services?  Well, according to the SharePoint team, it would enable SharePoint developers to keep pace with the rapidly evolving techniques and technologies that are widely used in the modern web development industry. That is open-source JavaScript and client-side code instead of Microsoft’s proprietary .NET model.

What is SPFx?

Basically it is a page and web part model that fully facilitates client-side SharePoint development. At the same time, it also allows easy integration with SharePoint data as well as support for open-source tooling. The interesting part is that SharePoint development specialists can do it in their preferred development environment. Moreover, it implements responsive and mobile-friendly design from the very beginning. Now developers can create highly-engaging user experiences in both desktop browsers and mobile devices using JavaScript.

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Components of SPFx

The SharePoint Development Framework features the following three technologies:

Yeoman: It is the template engine or scaffolding tool for modern web applications that run on top of Node.js. It allows developers to create project structures faster by using custom functionality.

Gulp: It makes development more efficient by leveraging wide variety of plugins to automate minification and perform repetitive development tasks.

Workbench: It increases developer efficiency by providing a local offline testing environment similar to SharePoint. It allows them to test new apps and web parts prior to pushing them to production environment.

New page structure of SharePoint

By design, the page layout of the framework is responsive and mobile-ready. A chrome layer surrounds the page body and manages the appropriate presentation of the page across devices. While web parts, apps, files, Delve components and other elements according to the business needs can be arranged in the page body. It opens new ways of creating exciting and engaging experiences.