Microsoft's Sway lets you share ideas on the web without any design skills

Sharing ideas on the web is tricky. You probably want something more persuasive than a social network update, but it's usually overkill to design a whole web page just to get your point across. Microsoft may have reached a happy balance between the two with Sway, a new part of the Office portfolio that lets you publish content in a slick, web-native format without knowing a thing about code or design. All you do is write and pull in content, whether it comes from your device or internet sources like Facebook, OneDrive and YouTube; Sway automatically organizes it all into polished web layouts that adapt to any screen size.

You can switch layouts to fine-tune your work and update projects over time. Think of this as a Medium-like authoring tool that handles much more than just articles -- it's possible to publish daily photo diaries, non-linear presentations and other pieces that would typically require a dedicated web editor or a specialized app.

Sway is launching as an invitation-only preview on the web, but Microsoft tells us that it's going to both expand the audience and the functionality very quickly. You should expect new features every couple of weeks, with feedback playing a big role in determining what comes next. The company plans to release an iOS app soon (Windows Phone and Android are coming as well), and you'll eventually have the option to post interactive charts and other Office 365 content. This won't necessarily replace an elaborate PowerPoint slide deck, but it could be good enough to get your classmates or coworkers to consider proposals that they'd otherwise dismiss out of hand.

Microsoft’s new Sway app is a tool to build elegant websites.A new type of Office app.

Microsoft is launching Sway today, a new app that’s part of the company’s Office family of products. It will sit alongside the regular Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps as a rich content creation tool. In its most basic form, Sway allows anyone to create a beautiful website from just images and text without any effort, and it’s all what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) — a modern and simple version of FrontPage. Despite that, Microsoft is taking an interesting approach with Sway, using the company’s powerful Azure cloud servers to suggest page layouts and quickly render content on the fly.

Sway will format pictures and text in a way that its algorithm feels is appropriate, even picking colors from photos to apply to the site. Although the end result is on the web as a site, it’s actually a complex new format that’s stored on Microsoft’s cloud servers. Sways will render differently based on device type, but they’re not traditional responsive design as Microsoft simply creates separate views on the backend.

You can create a Sway from the web, and soon Microsoft will have iOS and Android apps to make it easy to build one on the go. "Our intention is to go native where we can," explains Microsoft’s head of Office marketing Michael Atalla. "We totally want native experiences." In time that will include a Windows Phone app, and possibly a Windows app. Sway also features the ability to bring in content from OneDrive, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, so you could create an interactive Sway that includes a Twitter hashtag or timeline. Sways can then be shared on social networks and embedded on sites.

Microsoft is simply previewing Sway today, and the app is "incomplete by design" according to Atalla. Microsoft is planning to gather lots of feedback about what Sway designs work best and how people start to use this tool before it continues to tweak and improve it. You can imagine scenarios where small businesses like a restaurant could use Sway to create a menu they can regularly update, or a student uses it to build a better looking PowerPoint presentation.

Source: engadget.com