PowerPoint

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PowerPoint es el programa de presentaciones del popular paquete [[Microsoft Office]. El principal problema con PowerPoint en el mundo de internet hoy en día es que las grandes presentaciones gráficas, destinadas únicamente para ser proyectadas en el portátil de su creador, están siendo enviadas en e-mail, cargadas y compartidas en formas que hacen esencial la necesidad de reducir el tamaño de archivo y la creación de archivos compatibles con las diversas versiones de PowerPoint. Estas son nuevas habilidades e incluso los más experimentados usuarios de PowerPoint pueden no estar familiarizados con los problemas potenciales y sus soluciones. Una solución es simple, no utilizar PowerPoint, ya que hay muchas herramientas mejor empaquetadas para su distribución en la web, pero en muchas situaciones esto no es factible.

Reduciendo el tamaño de archivo para la web

Algunos pasos básicos para reducir el tamaño en archivos de PowerPoint:

• 'No permitas guardar rápido'(allow fast saves) - this option only appends new content to save time, it doesn't remove deleted material
• No guardes en formatos compatibles con PowerPoint '95 - this version did not support compressed images
• No utilices imágenes grandes - 1024 pixels wide by 768 tall is an upper limit
• No cortes y peges imágenes de otros productos Microsoft - use Insert > Picture > From File instead, as otherwise images will not compress

Para mayor profundidad ojea este documento:

Asistencia de Microsoft Office: Reduce el tamaño de tus archivos PowerPoint

There are also commercial tools available to buy that will streamline this process.

Powerpoint compatability

There are a host of problems to be faced when distributing PowerPoint presentations to a large audience, mostly based around the false assumption that what you see on your screen is what others will see on theirs. Only in the smallest and most integrated of organisations can you hope to specify a particular version of Powerpoint, and the only other practical approach is to keep it very simple and aim for the lowest common denominator of all potential versions of PowerPoint.

If you use PowerPoint 2002 (XP) or later then you can turn avoid many incompatibilities by checking the box next to "Disable New Features" in the Edit tab of the Tools > Options pop-up.

More details of the types of problems you may encounter can be found here:

Distributing PPTs - Pitfalls, Panics & Pleasures

Printing powerpoints

Saving paper

Since most powerpoints are created to be projected and read from across a room, they can often be easily printed with as many as 9 slides per page, usually without harming legibility and still leaving room for taking notes.

Microsoft Office Assitance: Print multiple slides on one handout page

Conserving ink

Color printers are increasingly common, but printing out powerpoints as they appear on screen can be incredibly wasteful of color ink. Powerpoint allows you to print color presentations in either Grayscale or Black and White. If your institution is paying for the printing costs, you may wish to enforce this decision by distributing the Powerpoint using a black and white template, separate from the full color template used for projection during the actual presentation.

Microsoft Office Assistance: Print a presentation in black and white or grayscale

Exporting to different formats

Flash

There are several commercial plugins that can export powerpoints as self-contained Flash movies. These may be smaller than standard powerpoints, though file size reduction can also be achieved without converting to a different format. OpenOffice's Impress and Apple's Keynote both have this functionality built in. Not all of the more advanced features of PowerPoint will transfer across (e.g. certain animations and sound effects).

Rich Text Format (.rtf)

You can save a PowerPoint presentation in Rich Text Format by selecting 'Outline/RTF' in the filetype dropdown after selecting File > Save As. In doing so you will lose all images and graphics and create a text file that can be opened in Word or PowerPoint, amongst other applications.

Portable Document Format (.pdf)

PowerPoint on Mac OS X allows you to export to PDF via Apple's standard print dialog.

PowerPoint alternatives

You do not need a copy of PowerPoint to merely view presentations. Microsoft makes a viewer program available for use on Windows and Mac OS X. The freely available OpenOffice Impress is available for Windows and Linux and adds the ability to create presentations in PowerPoint compatible format, amongst others.

PowerPoint Viewer

The PowerPoint Viewer is a free download from Microsoft, but note that even this program does not have full compatability with all PowerPoints created with recent versions of the full program.

PowerPoint Viewer 2003 for Windows.

Apple's Keynote

Part of Apple's iWork office productivity package (along with Apple Pages). Can open and save PowerPoint compatible files as well as saving in its own format and allowing export as PDF, Flash and Quicktime movies.

http://www.apple.com/iwork/keynote/

OpenOffice Impress

Part of the free and open source OpenOffice office suite. Can open and save PowerPoint compatible files as well as saving in its own format and allows exporting as Flash and PDF.

http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html

Moodle Presentation Modules

There are currently at least three experimental Resources/Activities that will allow you to create presentations within Moodle.

Slideshow which has a focus on images, in the manner of a slide projector.

Simple presentations based on Eric Mayer's S5 format, for creating slideshows using HTML.

Presentation Module, another HTML based tool, which has its own page of documentation.

PowerPoint accessibility

Most accessibility guides suggest that if you put PowerPoints on the public web then you should also include an accessible HTML format version for those who do not own PowerPoint. For documents published in the enclosed space of a Moodle course, it may be easier to ensure that all your students have access to PowerPoint (or a compatible program) since generating accessible, or even simple standards compliant HTML from PowerPoint is a complicated task.

There are commerical tools available that can help you with the task of creating accessible HTML versions of PowerPoint presentations.

PowerPoint problems

Edward Tufte argues in his book Beatiful Evidence that PowerPoint, even if used well by competent presenters, has some inherent flaws for the effective transmission of knowledge. The chapter, available separately as The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, argues that "[PowerPoint-style software] often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis" and goes on to ask "What is the problem with PowerPoint? And how can we improve our presentations?"