Sway: Microsoft's new Office app doesn't have an Undo function Microsoft has released a preview of Sway, which the company says is a "brand new app in the Office portfolio." But what is it? Sway is a "way to express yourself and bring your ideas to life," Microsoft says. This kind of fluff is a poor way to define a product. Here is another try, from the same announcement: A “sway” is …
Thanks for all the downvotes! :p
Would be nice to know why though... is it because I renamed the company, or because said company seems to create more and more products that work like they think you should work, and don't give you the option to work like you want anymore?
PowerPoint did no such thing. I see my fair share of presentations and can guarantee that neither thinking nor facts have anything to do with the godawful mess that finds itself on screen most of the time. If you added up all the hours wasted by middle management types pulling together hideous presentations you could probably rebuild the Eiffel tower, to scale, out of lollipops sticks. After eating said lollipops. Mmmmm lollipops...
"....It sounds fun, and interesting...." Hmmmm, I think the intended market is the real "99%", as in the 99% of smartphone, tablet and PC users that aren't power-users, that don't want or know how to use PowerPoint or Photoshop, but want to quickly be able to put a 'slideset' together for a limited audience. I'm thinking the guy with his holiday snaps, the kids that that took a video with their phone of their mates falling off their skateboards, that kind of user. They just want to take some media items and quickly create a polished-looking article, using someone else's clever templates, that they can then stick on Facebook or the like, and have it look good on different types of devices without having to do any intelligent work up front. For that 99%, this is social media WYSIWYG-on-steroids, requiring minimal learning yet giving a quite pleasing output. It won't appeal to those photo-editor snobs that can spend half-an-hour discussing RGB values but they are the 1% that will pay out for a full Photoshop license. All in all it seems a quite interesting idea.
"Hmmmm, I think the intended market is the real "99%", as in the 99% of smartphone, tablet and PC users that aren't power-users, that don't want or know how to use PowerPoint or Photoshop, but want to quickly be able to put a 'slideset' together for a limited audience"
I know this is a Matt Bryant post, but it makes sense, it isn't insulting anyone and I can even agree with it. I really can't see any point in down voting it which makes me wonder WTF the down voting clowns are up to.
Kinda weird seeing MS produce a SliTeX for the smartphone generation. :)
Well yeah. Matty's comment seems pretty reasonable ( not short, but reasonable).
Computers are for users.
Not for the IT guys.
And if the ordinary user can make a presentation this way, and it meets the purpose. Good.
Most users probably need about 1% of the software functionality they have. And probably don't know how to use the rest.
Even "Power Users" discover functions on a need basis. When they need to do something they find out how.
So if "Sway" gives users a toy to play with, and they can use it, cool!
Agreed with the OneNote reference, but next generation?
Check the OneNote website. It can already do everything this weirdness can.
Providing contents based on the device its on? Check.
Defining your own look & feel (even with the use of templates)? Check.
Allow the use of bullet points to sum up your ideas? Check. (sway doesn't it seems)
Separate between sections, cards and even notebooks? Check.
Related to point 2: change the layout of a card? Check.
Publishing your stuff into the cloud (OneDrive or Web app)? Check.
Using an undo function? Check!
OneNote next gen? I disagree. I'm more inclined to name this: "OneNote the cloud version". So basically selling us something which already exists, is slightly changed and (here's the cynic in me:) is most likely going to be a reason to charge more for the upcoming Office release.
Also important: another attempt of getting people to move away from the traditional approach of storing their contents on their own computers or (home) servers and instead move to the "cloud". A development I personally consider to be very dangerous.
For the record; that's coming from an Office fan ;) Although I'm still using 2010 to my satisfaction and have no need for the later products.
One Note Is part of Office and the complete application is on accessed and stored on your hard drive. I use Office 365 and the whole program is resident on my hard drive and if I choose to, I can save my Office files to One Drive, but the default file save is to my hard drive.
By the end of page 1 of the article I was getting slightly worried - I was thinking what might be on page 2. Add cards within cards, a powerful search function, a set of 'agents' that allow you to do things like 'list all cards with 'do this next week' in the title dated a week ago', hyperlinks between cards? A powerful scripted export template?
...but no Tinderbox is safe. The only reason I would ever run Mac OS again...
...I just felt a little bit of vomit in my mouth from reading Microsoft's description of this new cack. I think it was also caused by the nauseating aroma of bullshit that also emanated from my computer screen.
I love the way that they say 'Sway is an exciting way of creating Sways which are really exciting'. Awesome. Their Marketing department needs a pat on the back for that.
Must go now..... where's my bucket!!!???
And their idea is to remove all possibility of formatting altogether ?
Wow, that sounds like it's going to work very well for the general public - when in the meeting, that is.
Because I have never met a more pickier nitpick than the general public, Microsoft. Tell anyone that they can post something on the Internet these days and they're going to immediately want to see font options and paragraph options exactly like they see them in Word.
And you can't even resize pictures ? Come on, it's almost 2015 already, wake up in there ! What are you trying to do, Microsoft, reinvent Edlin for the web ?
Our marketing department at work are going to love this - and I think this is precisely who it is aimed at - corporate branding zealots.
No matter what content those irritating engineers and technical types put in, all those horrible to prettify graphs and tables, those CAD drawings - Sway will make it all conform to the pre-designed and expensively consulted image outreach campaign of the business.
The it will expand to be the required format for all internal communications...
It's a marcomms wet dream - no escape from the brand - ever...
Reminds me of groove, and net meeting, and InfoPath, one note and all those other little office add ons that come out over the years, chew up RAM and HDD space, no one uses and no one cares.
People only want the main three, (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) maybe access and publisher for the minority. They want to write, to add up, to show off and then maybe store some data and print pretty leaflets.
Basically this is another way to promote 'cloud' and 'ipads', as it looks touch based interface and that horrible 2013 everything is 'square' look. And cloud based stuff just doesn't meet the DPA real world scenario. (Or where BT run your internet speeds.)
MS always attempts to add a pointless application to each iteration of Office, they always fail, the only exception being OneNote which seems to have attracted a rabid* fan base. Looks like Sway is the new entrant in this category.
*rabid in the sense of those who colour code their emails or tidy their desk before going home each night.
Should be titled "My First Web App", this is the sort of stuff 14 year olds are doing for their ICT coursework. and from the sound of it, doing it better.
And - Powerpoint?? For dinosaurs, and the Very Boring. Anyone with an ounce of savvy uses Prezzy these days.
" Microsoft kindly gave me early access to the preview, emphasising that it is not yet a finished product."
El Reg headline: "Microsoft's new Office app doesn't have an Undo function"
Guess Microsoft didn't emphasise the "not yet a finished product" enough. There are some people you simply can't give beta releases to, because they immediately start complaining about the kind of things that a beta release doesn't have.
".....if you don't code them in from the ground up, they're unlikely to work...." Or, it could be the bones of the 'undo' routines are in the beta but not active because it's not yet ready for production. What, you've never released an alpha/beta with a feature commented out? So, how long have you worked with code....?
Am I alone in fearing that that wretched paperclip has been exposed to radioactivity or something**, and has undergone metamorphosis from an irritating add-on to a fully-blown app?
It will end in tears:- we're all doomed!
**You know - just like Spiderman, the Ninja Turtles, the Hulk etc., etc.
Is this not quite a poor attempt to do what Google tried in Wave?
I like OneNote which seem to do this only to a far better standard. I also liked Google Wave until they shelved it. I don't see this becoming much more than a bastardisation of the two.
But hey, time will tell
" Microsoft kindly gave me early access to the preview, emphasising that it is not yet a finished product."
El Reg headline: "Microsoft's new Office app doesn't have an Undo function"
Guess Microsoft didn't emphasise the "not yet a finished product" enough. There are some people you simply can't give beta releases to, because they immediately start complaining about the kind of things that a beta release doesn't have."
===========================================
This is not a beta; outside the Microsoft world at least, betas are feature-complete, but may not be bug-free. This is pre-alpha software at best. I think it's completely fair to call them out for releasing a preview that is *THIS* incomplete and limited in functionality.
Really, what IS the point of this? Powerpoint allows pulling in all these disparate data types onto slides, including the web links and everything. It supports output to several online formats; these currently assume rigid formatting (I suppose using fixed-width divs), but I can't see any reason why they couldn't have gotten more functionality than this pre-alpha by just supplying a second output driver that does not use fixed-width elements, allowing word-wrap etc. to happen based on the width of the screen (which is what it sounds like Sway is doing.)
"People love to consume content on the web, but they're utter morons who can't tie their own shoelaces. How can we, considering that the morons can't tie their shoe laces, make an application which aggregates the cat videos and viral tweets the morons so love so the morons can share them with other morons in a web 2.0 way?"
"Sir, how about we make an app which takes links and some basic text, and slaps a theme on it?"
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