PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

ToolBook Instructor 9.5: The Indezine Review

The amount of content available in the form of PowerPoint slides is amazing. Almost every computer-literate person has a bank of slides, be it at their company, home, school, university, or elsewhere. Most of this content won’t work too well when saved as a document—but since slides typically have (or should have) small portions of large-sized text with contrasting backgrounds and visuals, they end up becoming perfect as content from PDAs and Smartphones.

Products like ToolBook Instructor do a whole lot more than just such conversion, but in this review, we will focus on the PowerPoint capabilities of ToolBook Instructor, which will help you to convert your PowerPoint files into online, interactive learning course content with ToolBook’s rapid eLearning content creation capabilities.

Read the Indezine review of ToolBook Instructor 9.5.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: Add-in, eLearning, Online Presentations, PowerPoint, Review

SmartDraw 2009.5: Conversation with Paul Stannard

  Paul Stannard is CEO of SmartDraw.com, creators of the popular SmartDraw program. In this Indezine exclusive conversation, Paul discusses the new features in the just-released SmartDraw 2009.5

Geetesh: Tell us more about SmartDraw 2009.5’s new features, and why there are important to Microsoft Office users.

Paul: SmartDraw 2009.5 adds many new features. These three significant features increase SmartDraw’s already considerable integration with Microsoft Office:

1. In addition to using our presentation storyboard template to plan a PowerPoint presentation, you can now actually build it! SmartDraw 2009.5 will build a complete PowerPoint slideshow from your storyboard with graphical slides and animation. Using a storyboard in SmartDraw is a much more effective way to author a presentation than launching straight into the first slide in PowerPoint, and now you can translate your plan directly into slides.
2. A lot of people use SmartDraw for project planning. 2009.5 adds the ability to export SmartDraw projects to Microsoft Project and vice versa. Microsoft Project is a complex program usually used by experts. Now all the people working on a large project can use SmartDraw to manage their piece of it and submit their updated project information to a project guru who integrates it into the large project plan managed with Microsoft Project. Likewise, the guru running Project can break a large project down into smaller pieces and distribute it to the people managing each piece using SmartDraw.
3. SmartDraw 2009.5 adds the ability to directly select and import data from Excel into SmartDraw charts. You could always do this using copy and paste but now you can see your spreadsheet and select the portion you want while inside SmartDraw.

Geetesh: Your implementation of PowerPoint-specific features is complete enough so that content created in SmartDraw need not be re-colored or re-animated in PowerPoint. What motivated you to create something so complete?

Paul: It’s been said that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and we know that communicating visually with visuals in your slide is six times as effective for retention and comprehension than bullets. So, many SmartDraw owners use it to enhance their PowerPoint presentations.

Because this is such a popular and worthwhile application of SmartDraw we decided to provide a complete solution to PowerPoint users with the following capabilities:

1. One-click transfer to PowerPoint. One click on a button in the SmartDraw UI will transfer the visual you are working on to an open PowerPoint presentation by inserting a slide showing it.
2. Built-in animation. Most visuals, including charts and graphics, are better presented by revealing them in steps using animation rather than all at once. We call this sequencing and it’s automatic for many SmartDraw visuals. You can also customize the sequencing inside SmartDraw, preview it and then transfer the animation and the visual to PowerPoint with one click.
3. Building a PowerPoint slideshow from a storyboard. Creating an effective PowerPoint presentation is more than just creating effective slides. It’s also important to plan the order and content of the slides.

The SmartDraw storyboard template makes this much easier than working inside PowerPoint. You get a complete picture of your whole presentation. You can drag and drop slides and bullets to change the content and order effortlessly. You can also link to other SmartDraw files that contain visuals you want to include on a slide and see a thumbnail of it in your storyboard.

Finally, when you are satisfied with the storyboard of your presentation, you can pick the PowerPoint template you want to use and just one click will build the entire slide deck, inserting the visuals from other SmartDraw files you specified, including their sequencing. This command sews all of our PowerPoint integration together for a complete solution.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Graphics, Interviews, Microsoft Office, Paul Stannard, PowerPoint, SmartDraw

Add Texture Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

In previous tutorials, we have covered solid, picture, and gradient fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007. In this tutorial, we finish this series by showing you how you can use Texture Fills.

We also cover in detail how you can use the extensive tiling options available in PowerPoint 2007.

Add texture fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Color, Fills, PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Texture Fills, Tutorials

Add Gradient Fills to Shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

We already showed you how to add or change solid color and picture fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007. In the next part of this series, we show you all the stuff you can do with gradient fills in PowerPoint 2007. To keep things simple, you first learn how to add a gradient fill to a shape in PowerPoint 2007. Then, unleash some more gradient power by using the More Gradients option. Finally, become a gradient guru by learning to edit and create your own gradients using the cool Gradient Stops feature.

Add gradient fills to shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: Color, Fills, PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Tutorials

Wildform Flair: Conversation with Colby Devitt

  Colby Devitt is the president and co-founder of Wildform, a multimedia software company based out of Los Angeles, USA. In this conversation, Colby discusses Flair, their Flash authoring product that includes a dedicated PowerPoint to Flash converting component.

Geetesh: Tell us more about Flair and its PowerPoint to Flash converting capabilities.

Colby: Flair is a fantastic all-around program for people who want to author in Flash, but don’t want to take the time to learn or pay for Flash. (That said, we also have plenty of customers who are Flash developers who use Flair to supplement their work in Flash.) Flair is primarily designed for people who want to create multimedia and e-learning presentations. It includes a top-of-the-line PowerPoint to Flash converter, which consistently creates high-quality conversions with small file sizes. Plus, you can edit your converted PowerPoint files within the Flair editing environment, which is a huge advantage.

Geetesh: Flair is much more than a PowerPoint to Flash conversion program. However, can you highlight how Flair differs from other PowerPoint to Flash converting solutions?

Colby: You’re right — Flair is much more than a PowerPoint to Flash converter. Flair has multiple essential presentation capabilities in one program. It’s a Flash authoring tool, a video, image, and audio converter, a text effects animator, a quiz creator, and a full video and screen recorder (like Camtasia), in addition to being a full PowerPoint to Flash converter. Each of these capabilities in Flair could be a full program in itself.

The PowerPoint to Flash converter by itself is considered to be the best on the market. It creates high-quality conversions with small file sizes and is the only converter that I know of that lets you edit your PowerPoint files after you import them into Flair. This is a huge convenience for people working with multiple PowerPoint files because it lets you combine pieces from different PowerPoint files or edit the content of your inherited PowerPoint files before converting them to Flash. It also lets you use your existing PowerPoint templates and designs in Flair projects.

One of the reasons we created this all-in-one program called Flair was that our customers not only wanted to convert PowerPoint to Flash, but they also wanted to add multimedia elements and interactivity to their presentations. Flair is unique because it lets you create a lot of things you either cannot make at all or can’t make easily in PowerPoint. For example, Flair has a wizard that lets you combine and synchronize your video and PowerPoint files in three steps! People love this feature. Again, no other product on the market does this.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Colby Devitt, Interviews, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Flash, Wildform