7 ms·
Sway: A new presentation application from Microsoft
- joshkpeterson 12y agoWhy do product videos with high production value always make me want to vomit
- prezjordan 12y agoIt's like scrolling through molasses for me :) 15" retina MBP.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wavefunction 12y ago13" MBP pro (non-retina) works fine must be all those extra pixels you've got
- arasmussen 12y agocame here to say this. probably getting 15 frames per second during scroll. interestingly also 15" retina MBP.
- mherdeg 12y agoIs this Moorea? I can't tell.
- serve_yay 12y agoHuh, not bad!
- giancarlostoro 12y agoLooks like OneNote met PowerPoint and had a baby.
- tluyben2 12y agoA baby who grew up, is now 17, fit and dropping acid that is. Boring OneNote / Powerpoint seem far removed from this although the basics 'make documents and presentations' are there indeed...
- giancarlostoro 12y agoOneNote is on virtually every platform, at least it's on Android, not sure about iOS, and obviously on Web and Windows. Maybe someday Microsoft will release Linux packages, and I'll be a little happier with them.
- bhartzer 12y agoTried to get an 'invite' and they send an email asking you to Tweet about it for a better chance to get an invite. Seriously?!?
- razster 12y agoTweet pays are taking over now. Downloads started it and now signups.
- shostack 12y agoAt least they aren't charging for alpha/beta access like every game publisher out there. Sorry...I meant "Founder program."
- coryt 12y agoA lot of startups use this tactic, it's not uncommon. The email clearly says you're on the list, if you don't like waiting, tweet about it. What's wrong with that?
- jostmey 12y agoWhat's wrong with it? It irritates the consumer by making you feel like you are being played with. It really turned me off.
- gokhan 12y agoHere's the text: Thanks for signing up for an invite to join Sway Preview. We've reserved a spot for you. Hate to wait? Follow us and tweet why you're excited to use Sway, for a chance at earlier access. I would give out invites first to people telling the world why they're excited to use my product. It's better for my product, really, what's wrong with it? They don't force you to tweet to get an invite, that would be different (and tactically, but not morally, wrong).
- have_faith 12y ago> It's better for my product I think that's it. Asking me for free advertising for a product I haven't even had the chance to use feels like you just want to use me to promote your product, no one wants to feel used even if that means getting something out of it.
- greyskull 12y agoI'm surprised they didn't show this on Windows devices in the video.
- vxNsr 12y agoThey did show a few windows devices, the surface made an appearance as do a few different laptops and desktops, I think the lack of windows phones was just to give people the idea that it will support more than just windows.
- Artemis2 12y agoThis is very neat! It looks like PowePoint presentations, redesigned to be viewed by people on their computers instead of being projected in front of an audience.
- geori 12y agoPrezi!
- pbhjpbhj 12y agoThis was my first thought too. Certainly the output looks like prezi in the example I viewed. The inability to link to a particular part though reminds me of monolithic flash websites in a bad way. Hopefully the most value lies in the production interface?
- fiatjaf 12y agoIt is funny how "Seamless integrate with social networks" is considered a huge feature in any product or service anywhere, and it is a just a button to share some link to Facebook or Twitter, where it will be totally uninteresting.
- yournemesis 12y agoIt will also be placed in such a way that I accidentally click it all the time.
- untog 12y agoIt's also about controlling what photo goes on social networks, what the default share text is, blah blah blah. Like it or not, that stuff drives traffic.
- philippotto 12y agoIn the video it wasn't "a button to share some link" but it was a feature to search the social media and embed content in your "document". And even if it supports simple sharing, I don't see why this would be "totally uninteresting [there]". It would probably be more convenient than uploading a powerpoint file somewhere or creating a separate website. /edit: OK, there are two different mentionings of social media in the video. The first is about embedding content of social media and the second is about sharing the content you created.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago1. Interesting that they showed an Apple logo on the back of the iPad (it would be hard to hide that it was an iPad), but no evidence whatsoever of any Microsoft mobile device (does a laptop count?) 2. I kinda want that umbrella.
- outside1234 12y agoWelcome to the new (old?) Microsoft - building software for the devices people use.
- justinlloyd 12y agoBrands and icons that I could identify in order of appearance: Moleskine Apple iPhone Generic PC OneDrive Twitter Facebook Youtube Generic 3D Printer Apple iPad Room full of macs Generic LCD Television Twitter Surface 3 IE Desktop Windows Store IE Metro Outlook iPad Mini Nokia Phone Microsoft Office Microsoft I may have missed a few. It is a connected world. Smart companies "embrace and extend."
- spyspy 12y agoSome commas would be nice
- justinlloyd 12y agoI did not plan on commas because I entered the comment as a list without thinking that the formatting would be lost.
- lsinger 12y agoIt's yours for the taking: http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella
- mturmon 12y agoTo me, the message of the octopus umbrella unfolding against the sea of ordinary black umbrellas was a metaphor for the product itself. That is: use this stylish and creative alternative to the boring uniformity of corporate presentation software.
- iwaffles 12y agoSwaw reminds me of http://storehouse.co http://storehouse.co
- OrwellianChild 12y agoImpressive for a number of reasons, many of which relate to the presentation/promotion of a Microsoft product: - Not a single Microsoft reference in the entire landing page - Broad use of Apple iPhone and iPad devices alongside normal PCs with no special acknowledgement - Product focus on readability/usability across many platforms, OS/device-independent - Broad integration of sharing hooks across Google, Twitter, FB, etc. This represents a pretty dramatic departure from the siloed approach MS usually takes. It's pretty refreshing!
- johansch 12y agoEveryone likes an underdog. (Perhaps also ultra-rich underdogs.)
- theboywho 12y agoMost companies nowadays have some kind of Machine Learning in place, it shouldn't be a surprise if Microsoft uses some of that knowledge to craft their ads. It's not necessarly that they "got it", but maybe just doing what the data says they should do.
- OrwellianChild 12y agoI don't think there is a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting software that companies converge on. If "the data" is telling them to do this, Microsoft has managed to ignore "the data" for decades of marketing execution across many products and sectors. I'm just glad to see an example of their marketing strategy not shooting their products in the foot.
- incongruity 12y agoYou might be amazed how often senior executives ignore the data in favor of misconstrued notions of brand protection/image or fears about embracing things "not invented here". Moreover, this product (more the video for it) represents a departure from previous approaches on Microsoft's part. So, for that reason, it's interesting, IMHO. That having been said, I'm still not clear about exactly what the primary problem it is trying to solve. I get all sorts of little problems but there's no clear revolutionary "aha" in it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- vlunkr 12y agoI thought they were here already
- ycitm 12y agoInterestingly it looks like the "sways" do a lot of their layout calculations on the server. Resizing the window triggers a call back that returns what looks like a bunch of styling information (this div goes here, with this Z index, etc.) which would ordinarily be left to the browser. Perhaps this allows them achieve more than they could with the browser's layout engine? Certainly an interesting approach. (edit: wording)
- theatraine 12y agoFrom their blog entry: "Sway’s built-in design engine takes the hassle out of formatting your content by putting all of it into a cohesive layout as you create. ... This is thanks to a lot of Microsoft Research technology we’ve brought together in the background. As you add more of your content, Sway continues to analyze and arrange it based on the algorithms and design styles we’ve incorporated." It sounds like they're doing some more complication computation on the fly than typical responsive CSS. I suspect that it's related to some of the "Reading mode" work that they've done with IE.
- anigbrowl 12y agoAnd think of all the browser intelligence they get by doing that server-side - very smart.
- thrownaway2424 12y agoHow have they rigged this page so that keyboard scrolling doesn't work? And why would anyone do so?
- thrownaway2424 12y agoThey also managed to break mouse click, double-click, and drag-select.
- johnchristopher 12y agoI still hold the opinion that good typography and simple layout beats semi-interactive animated pages made up of static content (ie: graphs with real time update).
- magnet_ball 12y agoPeople always say that good typography beats everything but I have yet to see anyone explain typography more than the "use serifs for this and use sans serifs for that".
- coob 12y agoA handy guide: http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.html http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.htm...
- sheraz 12y agoTypography is a big topic, but a good introduction is "Stop Stealing Sheep and Find out How Type works" by Erik Spiekermann [1] It is an especially good read for non-designers, though I've given several copies to interns. [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Edition-Graphic-Communication-Courses/dp/0321934288 http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Edition-Graphic-Communication...
- qznc 12y agoMore simple statements: * The longer the line the more space between lines * Do not to mix font families * Do not use fancy fonts * You should probably give things more space around * Use left aligned text, not justified Of course, such rules are too simple. They have exception, implications, corollaries, and conflict with each other. Balancing this out is the art of typography.
- crisnoble 12y agoJason Santa Maria's new book from A Book Apart, On Web Typography, helped me as a non designer really understand good typography. I still cannot necessarily create good typography like the masters but I can now recognize it. http://www.abookapart.com/products/on-web-typography http://www.abookapart.com/products/on-web-typography
- rnernento 12y agoThis looks cool but I'm not blown away by the ad on any level. I don't feel like I have a good idea of what sway is or does. Is it powerpoint? Is it for making websites? How did it actually help that guy make his octopus umbrella?
- dfxm12 12y agoIt looks like a combination of (social) search, OneNote & PowerPoint. It seems to let you find, store and organize information. Then you may also format it for presenting. That's what I got from the ad anyway.
- newppc 12y agoWhen I first saw and started using OneNote it was a beautiful experience and felt so different from every other Microsoft product. So far, Sway could have that feel do if they do it right.
- Goopplesoft 12y agoExcept when you try to print on OSX!
- sudowhodoido 12y agoI thought that until it destroyed one of my notebooks. All 55 pages of it. I now use vim outliner and svn.
- alexruf 12y agoIt kind of reminds me of a modern Google Sites clone...but that OK. Looks cool!
- thrush 12y ago:)
- ciroduran 12y agoI got a feeling that MS reinvented Google Wave... maybe they can do it correctly this time.
- joshstrange 12y agoI never used Wave much (who did) but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the promo. This is probably one of the first MS products I have been interested in in some time. One of the biggest pluses for me was that they used Apple hardware in there commercial. In the past (especially under Balmer) they have been so anti-Apple it is painful.
- Someone1234 12y agoThis product is absolutely nothing like Apache Wave. More similar to some cross between PowerPoint Online and Sharepoint Online. Apache Wave is an attempt at an email replacement. Something akin to Facebook Messanger but with more hooks into extensions (kind of like Sharepoint meets Facebook Messenger). This product is more a publisher-like application, create stuff then share it, not a real time communications application.
- thrush 12y agoSomeone at Microsoft is reading these comments and sighing a huge "finally"
- 6nne 12y agoI heard about this when I interned at Microsoft a year ago. I'm excited it's finally been revealed.
- nhangen 12y agoSounds like I need to have a meeting with my attorney: http://buildsway.com/ http://buildsway.com/
- shanselman 12y agoLaunching 2012?
- nhangen 12y agoWe're a little behind :)
- shanselman 12y agoNo worries. I've got a little startup too and I totally get it.
- bhartzer 12y agoSo why don't you just update that 2012 to 2015 or 2016?
- anigbrowl 12y agoThat's going to make a trademark claim difficult, since your service hasn't really entered the stream of commerce yet.
- nacs 12y agoUnless you're King.com with the money to trademark a word like "Candy" you're not going to have much luck against MS with a 4 letter dictionary word.
- ravinder 12y agoI think even more interesting to see is a "Feedback" link in the header (visible after you sign in using the link on top right) which is asking users to vote/suggest on new product features. Coool!
- paul9290 12y agoWait the 1st subject In this video seems to be using an iPhone??? If I'm not mistaken Microsoft is In the phone business too...
- jasode 12y agoSome comments here express some head scratching on what exactly Sway is. I only saw the demo video like everyone else so I don't claim to know definitively but here's my take on where Sway fits. It looks like we're in a general upward trend of richer interactive documents created by average users. Some observations of the zeitgiest that look unrelated on the surface but nevertheless, seems to point towards a common desire for dynamic user-controlled "documents": -- Javascript d3.js embedded in stories, blog articles, etc that engages readers to "play" with data (Mike Bostock is a good example of interactive pictures for New York Times) [1],[2] -- Mathematica CDF (Computable Document Format) with things like sliders, etc to let the user control how the data changes[3] -- Bret Victor's various demonstrations for dynamic content [4] -- many more examples, etc. I cant remember but play on this theme Right now, there isn't an interactive document format (or interactive content creation tool) that dominates the way Microsoft PowerPoint dominates for the old-style static stuff. If one has the skills, one can write d3.js type presentations but obviously, the typical PowerPoint jock isn't not going to learn javascript like Mike Bostock. Before d3.js, if I personally wanted to write any interactive charts for presentation and embed that interactivity inside a document that managers could review offline, I'd create an Excel spreadsheet + add some GUI slider controls + add some Visual Basic code to react to sliders to update the spreadsheet.[5] Unfortunately, any xls (xlsm) file with a macro throws up all sorts of scary security warnings when a user open the xls file. It's just very clunky to share this type of doc. It's hard to tell from the demo, but it seems like Sway is also a tool to author content intended for non-linear exploration. (Whereas PowerPoint or MS Word docs are consumed in linear fashion ... PgDn, Pgdn, etc). Therefore, some of its features would overlap with an eLearning-creation tool like Adobe Captivate[6]. In short, I believe the market is trying to sort out how to empower averager users to make dynamic presentation content. The d3.js, the Excel macros, the Mathematica CDF, etc are tools that are too specialized and meant for experts. This is why the demo commercial emphasized a young child creating materials instead of an adult programming expert. It's the "so easy a child could do it" type of narrative. I can't tell from the demo if the content created would be 100% cloud stored and delivered. I would think that Sway would also have the capability to create self-contained document files. I can think of big customer like the USA government not using it if it's cloud only. The government loves their Powerpoint presentations. The government also has tons of locked down computers without internet access that share Powerpoints so a 100% cloud-Sway product would be a no-go. EDIT ADD: after looking at sway website again, I finally noticed that they have 6 example Sway presentations ("Sways we love"). None of those examples have any interactive data features that I could detect. On the other hand, the video @ 34 secs shows the woman manipulating a chart. The 6 example docs are not that impressive; they just look like a bunch of jquery sliding animations instead of representing the dynamics I see in the video. Maybe I'm overestimating what Sway actually can do. If it's just a program with a bunch of themes for sliding animations and adjustable grids that resize to desktop or mobile screens, that would be a huge disappointment. [1]http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ [2]https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery [3]http://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/CreateAComputableDocumentFormatFile.html http://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/CreateAComputabl... [4]http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable [5]http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/08/06/how-to-create-a-then-vs-now-interactive-chart-in-excel/ http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/08/06/how-to-create-a-then-vs-now... [6]http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html
- lukeman 12y agoAd seems a tad optimistic given the examples you can view are kind of awful. I get that not everything is going to be professional and polished when it hits the real world, but this can't be one of your three "sways we love" at product launch: https://sway.com/red_panda https://sway.com/red_panda
- OrangeFlush 12y agoJust FYI it's made by a 7th grader.
- vermooten 12y agoI'm embarrassed on Microsoft's behalf for that video.
- vanderZwan 12y agoWhy? I mean, sure, the lack of clear information of what it does is irritating, as is the vocal fry of the narrator, which is an incredibly ear-torturing fad that should die out. But those are both annoyances that apply to ads in general.
- sklivvz1971 12y agoI don't get the point of this. It's like iPhoto but worse... or maybe like Powerpoint but less functional: loaders, bad UX, blurry pictures, clearly lacking features (eg. export?) Is it their attempt at http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js?
- crazychrome 12y agoBusiness wise, i feel the product is not well targeted. Maybe MS has enough $$ to push it everywhere but for whom exactly this product is designed? for pro-consumers to create contents? i doubt. for the purpose of communication?seems overweight. maybe the best use case is for kids to do their course work. I'm a little bit of disoriented. Seems to me MS wants to re-invent the multimedia doc creation tool (which imho never really took off). I think the big question is if people value presentation over contents. If people in general values contents (or refrained presentation) then Sway probably going to lose, and Medium going to win.
- barbarian 12y agoWhoa; So we've been working on our start-up, https://qwilr.com https://qwilr.com - for the better part of a year; with the notion of "Documents For The Web" as our guiding principle from day-dot. Is this competition? I can't really tell.
- Renaud 12y agoYour product look useful and I might try it soon. However, there seems to be an issue on that page: on Win8.1 x64 and Firefox 32.0.3 I get constant CPU of between 25-60% when it's loaded (I'm on a i7 Haswell CPU with 6GB RAM, and I see my RAM usage creeping up by about 1kB every couple seconds as well). On Chrome 37.0.2062.124, I see the RAM usage creeping up in the same way, but CPU is low.
- robmccoll 12y agoHeading in the right direction, but still needs work. The rendering and layout don't work correctly in a window sized to 1920 x 2160 - things are getting clipped and the scrolling jumps 1/8th of the image, then to the next image.
- gordon_freeman 12y agoBased on the preview video, I liked Sway for following reasons: -- Device/Platform agnostic (can be used on iOs & more) -- Do research within the application can be a great user experience (assuming MS will allow options to integrate Google, DuckDuckGo as well along with default Bing for search) -- Quickly sharing dynamic document online and with anyone via link. -- Can start putting away draft document at the event itself can be good to note down ideas. Overall, I am pleasantly surprised that it came from Microsoft who I feel having still very old static office products such as Word and Powerpoint.
- rubyfan 12y agoCan I be first to say... "huh"?
- sytelus 12y agoDid anyone observed there were no bullet points in these presentations?
- webwanderings 12y agoBlogging and publishing platform.
- frevd 12y agoEpic fail like Encarta, monolithic, proprietary and ugly.
- Cybershambles 12y agoHey Microsoft, where can I buy one of these octobrella?
- bjg 12y agohttp://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella
- ForHackernews 12y agoThis reminds me a lot of Prezi: http://prezi.com/_ueivw8ad8xx/prezi-demo/ http://prezi.com/_ueivw8ad8xx/prezi-demo/
- BruceIV 12y agoSo, I skimmed a couple of the example "Sways we love", and I have to say, all the whizzy animations just make me think of all those horrible PowerPoint presentations anyone just learning does. I don't find the addition of flat UI to that overabundance of animations makes it any less distracting and unprofessional looking.
- steele 12y agoLooks like an evernote input to WinJS output
- emehrkay 12y agoAt first I was like "this just looks like a fancy reveal.js ()," but as the video played it begin to look like a fleshed out mag+(http://vimeo.com/8217311 http://vimeo.com/8217311) which is damn damn cool from Microsoft. If you can do this with html, imagine the text books you could author. Imagine uprooting that industry with $50 tablets that can offer rich experiences like this
- menssen 12y agoI disagree with the comments complaining that the "Sways we love" are just a bunch of sliding jQuery animations and therefore unimpressive. Say what you will about whether or not it's a good idea to promote the longevity of the "scroll and things happen when you scroll" user interface trend, somehow making it possible to build those interfaces with user-friendly tools is impressive. Think about it like this: Powerpoint is easy and widely used because it involves placing objects on a static, bounded, rectangular space, kind of like a piece of paper. On the other hand, coming up with some way to drag and drop a user interface element that I can only refer to as "that thing where there is a big image that fits the screen, and when you scroll it to to the top of the screen it stops, and then it fades out, and then the next section of text scrolls over the big image, and then when you scroll to the bottom of the text the image starts scrolling off the screen again", and then really making building that kind of interface element understandable in some kind of editor interface, would be pretty incredible.
- menssen 12y agoAlthough, as a follow-through on the "say what you will" comment above, the Mt. Rainier one where scrolling vertically makes it scroll sideways is an abomination.
- dunder 12y agoSome examples, https://sway.com/red_panda https://sway.com/red_panda https://sway.com/greening_my_thumb https://sway.com/greening_my_thumb https://sway.com/northwest_aquarium https://sway.com/northwest_aquarium
- afandian 12y agoI'm getting motion sickness going through those.
- spb 12y agoGod damnit, another "this looks really cool in a demo but has no actual practical application" showcase project from Microsoft. Flashy animations, incredibly purpose-specific widgets, and interactive graphs? Check. Video showing kids and families using the app to look up / compile trivia, for something nobody has ever actually done or would have any reason to do in real life? Check. "Social integration" as a selling point? Check. Microsoft: stop making this shit, like Office Assistant or Microsoft Bob, thinking it's a way of selling your platform to "the average user". The problem you want to solve is "customers aren't buying enough Microsoft products" - the problem you have in solving it is you think users say "I'm not buying enough Microsoft products", too. That is not the problem that they are looking to solve. People only say "that's something interesting I could play with" when they're trying to convince themselves to buy something they don't need (like a Quadcopter, or anything "as seen on TV") - it seems Microsoft's target audience for the last decade has been exclusively the kind of consumer who looks for reasons to buy Microsoft products (in other words, Microsoft employees).
- PaulHoule 12y agoI think there's a market for a Powerpoint Killer and it might look like this.
- Grue3 12y agoThe keyboard navigation is ridiculous. Why do I press up to move to the next slide???
- Too 12y agoHuh, https://sway.com/fabrikam https://sway.com/fabrikam is just a simple static website but with nice typography and a broken scrollbar.
- tarblog 12y ago...and terrible load times. In reality their load times are probably fine, but they immediately show a loading icon which make it feel like it takes forever. If they just rendered the above-the-fold content it would load in a snap. Like you said, it's basically static HTML.
- startupfartdown 12y agoI want to see a comic book made with this