Trying to learn SherPoint development with Sharepoint.com

Question

Because I don't have the hardware or license i bought Sharepoint Online from sharepoint.com

I've just started out, and want to for instance create a poll. I Visual Studio I have two choices:

• App for Sharepoint
• Visual Web Part

But I think Visual Web Part is the way to solve it, but when I select it Visual Studio says:

"The required version of SharePoint Foundation 2013 or SharePoint Server 2013 is not installed on this system, SharePoint must installed on the local system to develop SharePoint solutions"

I found and downloaded SharePoint Foundation 2013 from here, but nothing happens when I click "Install SharePoint Foundation".

I dont want to install Sharepoint locally as I dont have the hardware specs or the license to do so, but now Im thinking the online version u get for $3 at Sharepoint cant be used for dev?

Answer 1

To develop apps for SahrePoint Online you should select 'App for SharePoint' instead of Visual Web Part. You can choose from three types of hosting options, SharePoint-hosted, Provider-hosted or Autohosted. To know what are the differences between these options take a look at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp179887%28v=office.15%29.aspx.

If you go for SharePoint-hosted, you can create an app part by adding a Client Web Part (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/fp179921%28v=office.15%29.aspx). In Provider-hosted and Autohosted you can deploy your web parts by including them in a module.

You got this message:

"The required version of SharePoint Foundation 2013 or SharePoint Server 2013 is not installed on this system, SharePoint must installed on the local system to develop SharePoint solutions"

because you selected Visual Web Part while you didn't install SharePoint On-Premise. That is not really necessary if your purpose is to develop SharePoint solutions for SharePoint Online.