PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Apple Keynote Slide Size (aka Resolution)

When you launch Keynote and choose a theme for your new presentation, or apply a new theme to an existing presentation, you can change the Slide Size of the presentation.

Now the Slide Size is actually almost the same as the resolution of your presentation and is related to the resolution capabilities of your monitor display and projector. This is not as geeky as it sounds. Just remember that the most common and safe resolution for all new projectors is 1024 x 768 pixels, so, if you never bother changing the slide size, Keynote will continue creating your presentations in this resolution. In fact, Keynote defaults to 1024 x 768 pixels. Just stay with the defaults until you get a little more Keynote-savvy.

Older projectors worked at only 800 x 600 pixels, and most of the higher-end projectors can support much higher resolutions. Of course, if you want to choose a Slide Size that’s different than 1024 x 768, you must have a compelling reason to do so. Maybe, you want to use a wide-screen aspect, or you have been asked to use a different slide size.

You can choose your Slide Size in the drop-down list of the same name, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Slide Size in Keynote

As you can see in Figure 1, above, Keynote provides you with five slide sizes for this particular theme (Harmony). On the other hand, look at Figure 2, below, and you’ll find that this theme (Blackboard) has only two slide sizes. This makes it obvious that all themes don’t have all slide sizes.

Figure 2: Slide Size in Keynote

You’ll find a more detailed explanation of slide sizes in Keynote on the Apple site.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, iWork, Keynote, Resolution, Slide Size

Launching Apple Keynote

You can launch Keynote by double-clicking its icon in the Applications/iWork folder of the Finder. To learn how to access that icon, refer to this earlier post: Do I Already Have Apple Keynote?

However, that’s not how everybody launches Keynote! Look in your Dock and you’ll find an alias for Keynote there, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Keynote alias on the Dock

As you hover over all the aliases, you’ll see a tooltip that provides the name of the application the alias belongs to. Click the Keynote alias and the program should spin to life, asking you to choose a theme to create your first presentation, as shown in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Choose a Keynote theme to proceed

At this point, you have several choices:

1. Select a theme and click the Choose button so that Keynote launches with a new presentation based on the selected theme. You can also set a resolution for your new presentation at this time from within the Slide Size drop-down box, or if you don’t want to get into this aspect right now, leave the default values untouched.
2. Check the Don’t show this dialog again option so that you are not prompted to choose a theme the next time you launch Keynote.
3. Choose the Open an Existing File option so that you can browse and open an existing Keynote file (or open a PowerPoint presentation in Keynote).
4. Click the Close button so that the Keynote minimizes itself on the Dock. Click the Keynote alias on the Dock, and Keynote springs back instantly to life with the same dialog box asking you to choose a theme.

As you can see, you still haven’t created a single slide in Keynote yet! We’ll teach you how you can do that after we explain the Keynote interface to you in the next few posts. As always, do send your feedback through the feedback page.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, iWork, Keynote

280 Slides: The Ross Boucher Interview

Ross Boucher, along with Tom Robinson and Francisco Tolmasky comprise the team at 280North, a company based in Cupertino, United States that creates the 280Slides online presentation program.

In this interview, Ross discusses how 280Slides evolved, the interface, and more.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: 280slides, Interviews, Keynote, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Neuxpower Announces NXPowerLite 3.6

Neuxpower announced the release of NXPowerLite 3.6, an update to their optimization program for Microsoft Office file formats.

Tommy Powell of Neuxpower says they’ve “made some big improvements to the optimization engine, resulting in a number of improvements. For example, many more EMF and WMF images can now be optimized and we’ve improved the way image sizes are detected, achieving even better quality on some files, and better compression on many more”.

Read the Indezine review of Neuxpower NXPowerLite 3.6.

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in, NXPowerlite, PowerPoint, Review

Running Keynote for the First Time

When you run Keynote for the first time (or when you run Pages or Numbers), you are asked to input the serial number of the product, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Enter your iWork serial

The serial number can be found within the packaging, typically on a sticker pasted on the Installing iWork booklet. If you bought the product at an online store without physical delivery, the serial number can be found in the subsequent email you received.

Type in the serial number including all the dashes, and click the Continue button. Thereafter, you’ll be asked to provide registration info, as shown in Figure 2, below. And yes, my email address really isn’t [email protected]!

Figure 2: Send in your registration info to the folks at Apple

Thereafter, you’ll see a small Connecting window, which means your registration info is transmitted to Apple’s user database. Normally, this takes a few seconds, and you then see the Thank you window, as shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3: Your registration was successful

Thereafter, Keynote will launch. If there’s an update available at that time, you may be provided with an option to download it immediately.

Filed Under: Keynote
Tagged as: Apple Mac OS X, iWork, Keynote