8 ms·
Microsoft Project Siena (Beta)
- emmett 13y agoI found this page most incomprehensible, so I looked around. A reasonable summary of what they're trying to build here is "HyperCard for the internet", which is actually a pretty cool idea. This article had the best short summary in my opinion: http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5227140/microsoft-project-siena-windows-apps http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/19/5227140/microsoft-project...
- arebop 13y ago"HyperCard for Windows 8" rather: It's a Windows 8 application for making Windows 8 applications (which can use the network). Which makes this much less interesting to me.
- FiddlerClamp 13y agoAn important point - you can't create ready-for-the-Windows Store apps using Siena. They're apparently meant for internal company applications. I think you can export the project at the end so it can be massaged into a distributable app using VB/etc.
- gngeal 13y agoA reasonable summary of what they're trying to build here is "HyperCard for the internet", which is actually a pretty cool idea. That sounds very much like what the VPRI people have been doing all along.
- rjd 13y agoHa, I read the page for a moments thinking "What is this?... a cooking app?". Definitely a gold star in the incomprehensible awards. Thanks for the link.
- bobbles 13y agoThere is a list of sample apps available on the website which can give some other ideas how this might be useful: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dn494958 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dn494958
- _random_ 13y agoAnother HTML5 crap... I was hoping for a new technology.
- erikj 13y agoWhat kind of "new technology" did you want to see?
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoHTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS, obviously. http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/ http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/
- mhurron 13y agoExactly what I was looking for, thanks.
- rshlo 13y agoLooks nice. The problem with M$ is that over the years they've always offered simple tools for creating software, and then abandoning it somewhere along the way. Access is a great example.
- evo_9 13y agoMS Access hasn't been discontinued: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/what-s-new-in-access-2013-HA102809500.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/what-s-new-in-... Also haven't we all tired of the hole 'M$' thing?
- ZanyProgrammer 13y agoWhat versions of Office does Access come shipped with? I've rarely seen it in the wild since...a decade? And I work in a .Net shop.
- heartbreak 13y agoOffice 365 Home Premium, Office Professional 2013, and a la carte for ~$100.
- HNJohnC 13y agoM$? What decade are we in?
- stinos 13y agothe one where non-Microsoft users (or maybe rather, Microsft-haters) still want to express how they feel about Microsoft in every single sentence they use on the subject.. It's been around for a long time, and probably will still be used for a long time. Just ignore it and hope they eventually get over their slightly childish behaviour.
- alan_cx 13y agoYeah, probably "whinux" users.... ;)
- al2o3cr 13y agoGreat, I was worried the entire ecosystem of Geocities-UXed VB apps on Windows might disappear with the change to flat UI. ;)
- danso 13y agoI don't have a critique of this on technical merits, and obviously, an initiative that helps all users better manage information is step forward. And this isn't a critique of Microsoft specifically, but the descriptive copy for it follows a trend that bugs me: > View and download sample apps, learn best practices, and see how other app builders are using Project Siena to build visually stunning interactive apps today. Why does everything have to be "visually stunning" these days? No, I don't mean in actuality, but described as such? A service that can build useful apps that improve our lives should be associated with adjectives like "powerful", "flexible", "intuitive"...And no, I don't endorse the use of adjectives in general, I'm just saying I wish copywriters, their managers, their product designers, etc. would not worry so much about "beauty" especially when "beautiful" is something that can be seen and should speak for itself. I guess it's not the copywriters' fault as so much as just writing what the public likes to see...I wish the public would expand their concept of what good software is, how "beauty" is great, but not at all the primary requirement for the domain of something like the OP. And of course Microsoft is not alone at fault. If anything, Apple probably inspired it, and who can blame Apple considering their success? Look at how their copy for a spreadsheet application: http://www.apple.com/creativity-apps/mac/ http://www.apple.com/creativity-apps/mac/ > Numbers helps you make spreadsheets more insightful — and more beautiful. Drop your data into a stunning, Apple-designed template. Or start with a blank canvas. Add in some quick calculations. Then visualize the numbers with a dramatic interactive chart. Suddenly, you see what it all means. How beautiful is that? (I'll be the first to admit, I do like having nice typography in my Terminal, though)
- randomfool 13y agoThe copy is cringe-worthy in general- "a new technology for business experts, business analysts, consultants, and other app imagineers. Now, without any programming, you can create powerful apps for the device-first and cloud-connected world, with the potential to transform today’s business processes."
- sdf333 13y agomicrosoft; dr
- randomfool 13y agoWhat's the relation between this and LightSwitch? Both are from DevDiv and it seems like there's a good deal of overlap in goals. Is LightSwitch being de-emphasized (put on life support) because it doesn't fully encourage WinRT?
- gecko 13y agoLightSwitch is going web-only, as far as I can tell, so this may simply be splitting off and rebranding the Win 8 side of things.
- joseph_cooney 13y agoBecause if there's one thing the MS ecosystem needs, it's more dev fragmentation....
- MartinMond 13y agoThis has the potential to be awesome. Looks like a Windows RT-ready stripped-down MS Access. Something that allows e.g. sales people to create fancy presentations slash catalogues. I'm not on the Windows platform and have no need to move there, but it's good to see some innovation coming from them.
- undoware 13y agoThis product is aimed at fledgling entrepreneurs with an interest in accruing the benefits of technology, but without the expertise or in-house resources to leverage the FOSS chain. Remember: From our perspective, MS is a bunch of evil-empire joykills: lock-in, licensing, lucifier. But for most businesspeople, especially the non-startup bootstrappers, they are promethean, stealing fire from the mandarins of software engineering and bestowing it on worthy dreamers. FOSS is hard; cross-platform is hard; Siena is easy. Personal context: I flinch instinctively when I see or hear MS' products. However, I'm responsible for ops at my job and I know damned well that there are several generations of small businesses for whom 'business management' is spelled 'A-C-C-E-S-S'. You can criticize this, you can complain about this, you can pay a bunch of bright young things to rewrite it Node or whatever, but you are never going to convince the businessowner that Access is a bad idea. That same businessowner started one day in his garage with an empty Access database and remembers both it and those days with justified fondness. He's still just getting over not being able to 'improve' your schema on his laptop on lunch break so it 'makes more sense'. I predict in ten years there will be a huge market for consultants getting businessses OFF this thing. But there will also be a huge pool of new businesses it helped create, so on balance, let me be the first to say: Hello World, Siena, and welcome.
- kitsune_ 13y agoAnd the Mac equivalent to Access here is FileMaker. Entire kingdoms have been built by using one of these applications as a foundation.
- undoware 13y agoRight. Which is why my first advice to a non-tech person starting a business is still 'go out and get Access'. Because I can pitch as hard as I like for Node and Angular, I'm never going to make callback-passing and dependency injection as intuitive as 'New Access Database Wizard'. Come to think of it, 'use Access' is pretty good advice for businessy techies, too. It's a lot harder to rabbit-hole when the earth is actually molded plastic. :)
- jsmeaton 13y ago
- skrebbel 13y agoJust played around with it for an hour or so. I really like the UI, it's very basic yet quite powerful. I like how they used Win8 UX concepts for a complex app, it works much better than I would've expected. I find myself using my laptop's touch screen as a matter of course. It's quite powerful even without the using the function reference, because common actions have dedicated UI, and all fields have great autocomplete. I also realized that a modern HyperCard is really just all I wanted, and it seems that this may be it. That said, it really lacks on the documentation side. The function reference is a start, but without understanding the concepts, getting something real to work feels a little impossible. (Example: `Remove` removes an "item", but how is an "item" identified? Does a screen have a "current item"? How does this work?) Still, a very nice start. I hope this gets better fast and then I'll want to be a power user. I also hope they won't start charging Access-style prices for it.
- Poiesis 13y agoIf this was recently released, they sure have poor timing. If this has been around a while, seems like poor marketing.
- concise_unicorn 13y agoIs it just me or does it fail to explain just what it is, exactly?
- spitfire 13y agoCool! We're catching up to Enterprise Object Framework from NeXT in 1994.[1] Skip to 23:00 for the demo of Steve Jobs building a database app in a few minutes. Yes, this is stuff we should have. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gveTy4EmNyk
- josephcooney 13y agoI think VB3 had all that too. I liked at the 21:00 minute mark how he was telling us how awesome faxes were. Surely iOS could do more with faxes.
- theFluke 13y agoNow everyone can have their very own custom recipe app.
- bnastic 13y agoAre they hoping to create Visual Basic for the new generation? Microsoft can only hope to make this as popular as VB was some 15-20 years ago.
- puppetmaster3 13y agoThis thing lets non programmers, like marketing folk, write an app. This is very good. Not apps don't require a real programmer, we can do real work.