Sway: A new presentation application from Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

Sway: A new presentation application from Microsoft

sway.com

275 pointsvtbose136 comments

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!

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

Not

Which makes sense - Microsoft wants to sell applications and services - regardless of the device you own. Apple wants to sell devices, regardless of the application you use.

Ironically, Microsoft/Apple have developed into potentially very strong partners. If Microsoft starts to move away from being a hardware company, they will be a great fit.

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.

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)?

You can add to that list that the product video on the page is hosted on YouTube, not a Microsoft streaming video service.

They even feature firefox on their intro page ... https://sway.com/red_panda ;0)

Everyone likes an underdog. (Perhaps also ultra-rich underdogs.)

Not sure if you will ever see this... but Sway added a large dropdown for other Office Online apps. So much for being subtle.

Most 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.

You 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.

I 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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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.

It'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.

It will also be placed in such a way that I accidentally click it all the time.

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).

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

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).

Agreed. A single chart clearly illustrating the point you are trying to make vs. an interactive do-hickey that I have to twat about with and then infer meaning from, IMHO shows a huge disrespect for time of the audience. After all, its the authors responsibility to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively; no one is entitled to an audience. I wish more documents/spreadsheets/presentations understood this.

As always, it depends on context. I have people who will read my reports and ask endless questions about the data that I can't foresee. These are the people who will appreciate the interactive tool - it allows them to view the data in the way that gives them the most meaning.

On the other hand, sometimes I need to persuasively illustrate a singular point, as you say. In this case, a single non-interactive but stylish and easily interpreted representation fits better.

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".

A handy guide:

http://practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.htm...

Typography 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...

More 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.

Jason 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

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?!?

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?

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

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).

> 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.

I would give out invites first to people telling the world why they're excited to use my product.

...before they've used it. It's deceptive marketing in that sense. I was surprised and annoyed when Ello wanted me to to promote in exchange for early access, after all that aspirational talk in their manifesto.

I agree, shouldn't a new service (especially one from Microsoft) be able to get traction without asking people to use another social network to help publicize itself?

The need for marketing does not go away when you become as big as Microsoft and what larger marketing platform is there in todays world than social media. I'm confused by the number of folks on HN who are confused by the use of social media for marketing.

Especially given how many small startup / tech products don't let you sign up without Tweeting about them - at least it's optional in this case!

At least they aren't charging for alpha/beta access like every game publisher out there. Sorry...I meant "Founder program."

Tweet pays are taking over now. Downloads started it and now signups.

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/

[2]https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery

[3]http://reference.wolfram.com/language/howto/CreateAComputabl...

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

[5]http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/08/06/how-to-create-a-then-vs-now...

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

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/...

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

http://shiny.rstudio.com

https://plot.ly/r/shiny-tutorial/

Interestingly, Microsoft recently invested in IPython development: http://ipython.org/microsoft-donation-2013.html

upvote for iPython

Everything that is old is new again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/17/hypercard

Looking at the video it looks like the woman does not really manipulate the chart. It looks more like creating a chart and setting the type of diagram. Hence the result is a static chart not an interactive one.

Check out this new live web presentation about sway presentations. How meta.

Http://tracks.roojoom.com/r/15310

Nice post,

> that managers could review offline

web pages can be viewed offline

Agree, nice post.

Two of the major challenges displacing PPT with interactive tools, particularly in consulting, market research type of business, where large 100+ slide decks are common, are going to be the (1) need to produce decks on clients' templates and (2) need to email decks.

The direction in which a few emerging CSS/JS based tools (slides, reveal, etc) are going will not solve that problem. D3/WebGL etc. are awesome, of course, for the web. However it's relatively rare when a busy exec will have time to use non PPT based deck.

I agree with your sentiment about email, and wanted to add that the major reason for this is still a fear of lack of Internet. There has never been a meeting I've attended in ~20 years where we didn't have a backup plan if we had no Internet. This still looks like a solutions that needs the Internet to work. MS would do well to make these formats offline and open-able with the next version of PPT. Take that to the bank!

>There has never been a meeting I've attended in ~20 years where we didn't have a backup plan if we had no Internet.

In what kind of business? This sounds like totally atypical in any modern enterprise.

Not easily. Not by your average user.

From a technical perspective a standard web page could be saved in single HTML file that can be opened offline (with all JS/CSS inlined and images base64 encoded and inclined)--so it can be as easy as double-clicking on a file (just an .html file instead of .ppt).

The average user probably lacks this knowledge though and wouldn't know to or try to double-click on an html file but it is technically feasible.

Microsoft had technology to do just this in 1999 (!). It was known as 'HTA' (Html Applications) but was ahead of its time - the rich DOM manipulation and CSS effects we have now didn't exist. HTA was discontinued years ago afaik, but in hindsight it was a peak at the future.

[can no longer edit but of course should have said 'peek' blush]

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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."

Some commas would be nice

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

To 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.

Welcome to the new (old?) Microsoft - building software for the devices people use.

It's yours for the taking: http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella

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.

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.

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.

Swaw reminds me of http://storehouse.co

Looks like OneNote met PowerPoint and had a baby.

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...

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

13" MBP pro (non-retina) works fine

must be all those extra pixels you've got

came here to say this. probably getting 15 frames per second during scroll. interestingly also 15" retina MBP.

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) 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

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.

Some examples,

https://sway.com/red_panda

https://sway.com/greening_my_thumb

https://sway.com/northwest_aquarium

I'm getting motion sickness going through those.

Whoa; So we've been working on our start-up, 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Except when you try to print on OSX!

I thought that until it destroyed one of my notebooks. All 55 pages of it. I now use vim outliner and svn.

Huh, https://sway.com/fabrikam is just a simple static website but with nice typography and a broken scrollbar.

...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.

This reminds me a lot of Prezi: http://prezi.com/_ueivw8ad8xx/prezi-demo/

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

http://www.krakenrumstore.com/products/the-kraken-umbrella

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

http://buildsway.com/

Unless 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.

There was also http://www.findsway.com/ , the failed Tinder wannabe that was available on Android before Tinder. The exclusivity of popular iOS apps (mainly this...all those doods hooking up tho) somewhat contributed to my 5s purchase. I was using Sway just before it came out and would find something like 10 people with the maximum search radius and age range xD Anyways, I have since deleted my accounts and uninstalled both of these apps.

Launching 2012?

We're a little behind :)

That's going to make a trademark claim difficult, since your service hasn't really entered the stream of commerce yet.

No worries. I've got a little startup too and I totally get it.

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

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

You just did send traffic there.

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

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

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

I want to see a comic book made with this

Blogging and publishing platform.

Looks like an evernote input to WinJS output

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

Prezi!

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?

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

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

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

Huh, not bad!

Is this Moorea? I can't tell.

Epic fail like Encarta, monolithic, proprietary and ugly.

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

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.

I 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.

Deleted comment

I thought they were here already

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...

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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