
Sway: A new presentation application from Microsoft - vtbose
https://sway.com/
======
OrwellianChild
Impressive 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!

~~~
oliv__
Try to imagine the same ad from Apple. With Surface Pro 3 and Nokia Lumia.

Not

~~~
discardorama
Why? Apple is the leader; why should they bow down to the level of inferior
competitors? Microsoft didn't refer to iphones and ipads out of the goodness
of their hearts; but because these devices are the devices of choice for the
creative crowd.

~~~
teekert
Uhm for example because office/onenote on android/iphone works great and are
completely cross-platform (with Linux you are confined to the browser but oh
well)?

------
ycitm
Interestingly 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
From 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
And think of all the browser intelligence they get by doing that server-side -
very smart.

------
fiatjaf
It 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.

~~~
philippotto
In 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.

------
spb
God 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
I think there's a market for a Powerpoint Killer and it might look like this.

------
johnchristopher
I 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
People 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
A handy guide:

[http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-
minutes.htm...](http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.html)

------
bhartzer
Tried to get an 'invite' and they send an email asking you to Tweet about it
for a better chance to get an invite. Seriously?!?

~~~
coryt
A 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
What's wrong with it? It irritates the consumer by making you feel like you
are being played with. It really turned me off.

~~~
gokhan
Here'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
> 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.

------
jasode
Some 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/CreateAComputabl...](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/CreateAComputableDocumentFormatFile.html)

[4][http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable](http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable)

[5][http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/08/06/how-to-create-a-then-vs-
now...](http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/08/06/how-to-create-a-then-vs-now-
interactive-chart-in-excel/)

[6][http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html](http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.html)

~~~
bentcorner
I'm personally looking into iPython - it seems like a useful tool for
interactive presentations.

For example: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/plotly/python-user-
guide/...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/plotly/python-user-
guide/blob/master/s3_bubble-charts/s3_bubble-charts.ipynb)

~~~
joshz
Shiny is pretty nice for presentations and Plotly works with R. Not to knock
IPyNb because I love it too.

[http://shiny.rstudio.com](http://shiny.rstudio.com)

[https://plot.ly/r/shiny-tutorial/](https://plot.ly/r/shiny-tutorial/)

------
thrush
Someone at Microsoft is reading these comments and sighing a huge "finally"

~~~
6nne
I heard about this when I interned at Microsoft a year ago. I'm excited it's
finally been revealed.

------
gordon_freeman
Based 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.

------
ravinder
I 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!

------
drivingmenuts
1\. 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.

~~~
justinlloyd
Brands 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
Some commas would be nice

~~~
justinlloyd
I did not plan on commas because I entered the comment as a list without
thinking that the formatting would be lost.

------
menssen
I 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
Although, 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.

------
Artemis2
This 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.

------
iwaffles
Swaw reminds me of [http://storehouse.co](http://storehouse.co)

------
giancarlostoro
Looks like OneNote met PowerPoint and had a baby.

~~~
tluyben2
A 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
OneNote 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.

------
greyskull
I'm surprised they didn't show this on Windows devices in the video.

~~~
vxNsr
They 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.

~~~
grimman
There was a Nokia, and they're practically all Windows phones, no?

~~~
vxNsr
You're right, I can't believe I missed that, I'm usually able to spot the
different types of devices.

And yeah, that is a windows phone.

------
prezjordan
It's like scrolling through molasses for me :) 15" retina MBP.

~~~
wavefunction
13" MBP pro (non-retina) works fine

must be all those extra pixels you've got

------
emehrkay
At 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

------
BruceIV
So, 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.

------
dunder
Some 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
I'm getting motion sickness going through those.

------
barbarian
Whoa; 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
Your 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
Heading 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.

------
rnernento
This 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
It 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
When 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
Except when you try to print on OSX!

------
Too
Huh, [https://sway.com/fabrikam](https://sway.com/fabrikam) is just a simple
static website but with nice typography and a broken scrollbar.

~~~
tarblog
...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.

------
ForHackernews
This reminds me a lot of Prezi: [http://prezi.com/_ueivw8ad8xx/prezi-
demo/](http://prezi.com/_ueivw8ad8xx/prezi-demo/)

------
Cybershambles
Hey Microsoft, where can I buy one of these octobrella?

~~~
bjg
[http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-
umbrella](http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella)

------
nhangen
Sounds like I need to have a meeting with my attorney:

[http://buildsway.com/](http://buildsway.com/)

~~~
shanselman
Launching 2012?

~~~
nhangen
We're a little behind :)

~~~
bhartzer
So why don't you just update that 2012 to 2015 or 2016?

~~~
nhangen
We don't really send any traffic there, so it would be a moot point.

~~~
Touche
You just did send traffic there.

------
Grue3
The keyboard navigation is ridiculous. Why do I press _up_ to move to the next
slide???

------
alexruf
It kind of reminds me of a modern Google Sites clone...but that OK. Looks
cool!

------
sytelus
Did anyone observed there were no bullet points in these presentations?

------
startupfartdown
I want to see a comic book made with this

------
webwanderings
Blogging and publishing platform.

------
steele
Looks like an evernote input to WinJS output

------
rubyfan
Can I be first to say... "huh"?

------
geori
Prezi!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This 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?

------
thrownaway2424
How have they rigged this page so that keyboard scrolling doesn't work? And
why would anyone do so?

~~~
thrownaway2424
They also managed to break mouse click, double-click, and drag-select.

------
joshkpeterson
Why do product videos with high production value always make me want to vomit

------
thrush
:)

------
serve_yay
Huh, not bad!

------
mherdeg
Is this Moorea? I can't tell.

------
frevd
Epic fail like Encarta, monolithic, proprietary and ugly.

------
ciroduran
I got a feeling that MS reinvented Google Wave... maybe they can do it
correctly this time.

~~~
Someone1234
This 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.

------
paul9290
Wait the 1st subject In this video seems to be using an iPhone???

If I'm not mistaken Microsoft is In the phone business too...

------
vermooten
I'm embarrassed on Microsoft's behalf for that video.

~~~
vanderZwan
Why? 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
I 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)?

------
lukeman
Ad 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
Just FYI it's made by a 7th grader.

------
crazychrome
Business 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.

