Presentations based on XHTML Documents
Eric Meyer introduces the first steps of a presentation technique that relies entirely on XHTML-Documents, Cascading Stylesheets and JavaScript. This has some advantages:
- the documents are more lighweight that PowerPoint files
- they can be published on the web without the need to adapt them
- a printable version is “built in”
- they are planned to work on every browser so you don’t have to worry about the version of PowerPoint installed on your target computer
Inspiration came from Opera’s presentation mode called “operashow”, which I talked about myself a while ago.
This is a highly interesting approach and I’m looking forward to seeing it refined. I would not look back to PowerPoint once a usable and variable alternative exists.
> A printable version is “built in”? Well, potentially, I’d say.
Yes, of course it comes in the form of a print stylesheet. But I've often seen printouts of PowerPoint files with dark backgrounds -- and you'd better not think of the cost of colour ink in such a case.
You're right that PowerPoint makes it very easy to put something together visually. However, I've often wanted to put presentations up on the web which is a real pain with PP.
There is certainly room for improvement with this technique and I'm sure that we'll see new tools in the future that combine the easy-to-do visual apporach of PP with the flexibility of a XHTML document.
Yes, of course it comes in the form of a print stylesheet. But I've often seen printouts of PowerPoint files with dark backgrounds -- and you'd better not think of the cost of colour ink in such a case.
You're right that PowerPoint makes it very easy to put something together visually. However, I've often wanted to put presentations up on the web which is a real pain with PP.
There is certainly room for improvement with this technique and I'm sure that we'll see new tools in the future that combine the easy-to-do visual apporach of PP with the flexibility of a XHTML document.
Seems like I misunderstood the intention. I rarely think of an presentation "for the web", a task which I would certainly solve with XHTML/CSS.
Printed PP-presentations are indeed a mess. Or are very often. I meant that you need a print-CSS in order to have a good printout. Depending on your User Agent, the default will be acceptable or not.
Printed PP-presentations are indeed a mess. Or are very often. I meant that you need a print-CSS in order to have a good printout. Depending on your User Agent, the default will be acceptable or not.
I'd been thinking in terms of my recently finished university background.
There, once you've spent a lot of time putting together a good presentation about , say, "Irish History", it makes a lot of sense to publish it on the web. For participants of the seminar, to have a second look at the slides or for non-participants to get an introduction of the topic.
I can see that in many professional frameworks, many presentations are intended for a limited audience.
There, once you've spent a lot of time putting together a good presentation about , say, "Irish History", it makes a lot of sense to publish it on the web. For participants of the seminar, to have a second look at the slides or for non-participants to get an introduction of the topic.
I can see that in many professional frameworks, many presentations are intended for a limited audience.
I can understand your preference for OperaShow or any other XHTML/CSS-based solution. However, although I don't like PowerPoint very much, I prefer a visual method for making presentations.
Sure, I can code XTHML and CSS. I certainly do very often. But if I want to concentrate on content, moreover on content which is not entirely textual I simply don't want to code it.
Presentations are more than just marking up some text. However, the OperaShow-generator makes life a little easier.