- 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.
Not
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.
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.
Perhaps this allows them achieve more than they could with the browser's layout engine? Certainly an interesting approach.
(edit: wording)
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 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.
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).
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.
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...
* 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.
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.
[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...
For example: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/plotly/python-user-guide/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/17/hypercard
Http://tracks.roojoom.com/r/15310
> that managers could review offline
web pages can be viewed offline
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.
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.
2. I kinda want that umbrella.
I may have missed a few.
It is a connected world. Smart companies "embrace and extend."
That is: use this stylish and creative alternative to the boring uniformity of corporate presentation software.
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.
It looks like PowePoint presentations, redesigned to be viewed by people on their computers instead of being projected in front of an audience.
must be all those extra pixels you've got
Is this competition? I can't really tell.
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.
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.
Hopefully the most value lies in the production interface?
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.
If I'm not mistaken Microsoft is In the phone business too...
Is it their attempt at http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js?
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.