Author: Rob Reilly
many benefits for your audience and your company. Here are some of them:
- You can invite your audience to review your site as they review your slides
- You can conveniently provide the slides for download or collaboration
- During conference calls, associates can use their browsers to follow your presentation
- In large venues, sight impaired audience members can follow your talk on
their wireless Web-connected laptops
Putting your PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org Impress
slide show on the Web provides
many benefits for your audience and your company. Here are some of them:
- You can invite your audience to review your site as they review your slides
- You can conveniently provide the slides for download or collaboration
- During conference calls, associates can use their browsers to follow your presentation
- In large venues, sight impaired audience members can follow your talk on
their wireless Web-connected laptops
It’s easy to crank out a slide show, using OpenOffice.org Impress, that can be
uploaded to your Web site. Impress also builds a basic start page, with a slide
index, summary, and navigation buttons. Best of all, it’s quick and there’s no
HTML programming needed.
So let’s put your slide show on your Web site.
PowerPoint, Impress, and importing
Start out by either importing a Powerpoint presentation or creating your own
slide show with Impress.
Importing a Powerpoint presentation is easy. Start OpenOffice.org, go to File ->
Open, choose the file type “presentation,” and select the .ppt file. Impress
will open the file directly in the display window. Figure 1 shows the first page of
a Powerpoint formatted file that I’ll use as an example.
| Fig. 1 Presentation in OOo Impress |
Creating a new presentation is easy, too. Start OpenOffice.org, go to Use File
-> New, choose the file type “presentation,” and go through the various menus to
get to the first slide. Add your own content and graphics to create your slide
show.
Note that unless you have the TrueType fonts set up correctly on your machine
(Windows or Linux), some of the fonts on the imported Powerpoint file may not
appear correctly. Usually this shows up when you’ve used non-standard fonts in
your Windows .ppt file and have then moved the file to your Linux machine. It’s
a good idea to change the fonts to common ones anyway (such as Times New
Roman or Helvetica), so your text will display correctly when exported for Web use.
Also, when viewed in a browser, links that are referenced on your slides won’t
work because the slide has been converted to a .jpg graphic. The problem is easy
to fix by inserting links on the “notes view” tab in Impress. When the slide is
exported, the link will show up in the Notes: section at the bottom of the slide
page. Users can then click on that link to go to those pages.
Send your slide show to the Web
After you have your slide show in Impress, you can then export it for use on
your Web site. Follow these steps:
- File -> Export, then select file type “HTML” and enter the name of
the file. Click the “Export” button to go to the HTML export screens.
- On the “Assign Design” screen select “New Design” and click |Next| to go to
the next screen or |Create| to just finish the process and export.
- On the “Publication type” screen, select the standard HTML format. You’ll
want to check the create title page and show notes boxes. Click |Next| or
|Create|.
- The “Save graphics as” screen will let you select the graphics format (jpg
or gif) and set the graphics quality. You can also choose the finished
resolution. Use Low for a compact slide show suitable for all browsers or
High for 1024×768, full screen resolution.
- Fill in the “Info for title page” form with the slide show author’s name, email
address, home page, and any additional information. You’ll probably want
to check the “link to original” box, so readers can download your slide show.
- Pick out an appropriate button style on the “Select the button style” screen.
- On the “Select color scheme” screen you can simply apply the colors from
the document. Options will let you customize colors for the text,
hyperlinks, background, and etc.
- When you are all done, click the |Create| button to do the export to HTML.
You see an HTML name select box, but can just click the |Do Not Save| button.
| Fig. 2 Starting a slide show in a browser |
Your Web slide show masterpiece will be located in the same directory as the
original .ppt or .sxi file. The package will consist of the start HTML
page (named after the original slide show file), the button .gif files, slide
show .jpg files, and the individual slide HTML files.
Point your browser at the start page file and you can click through your slides
using the navigation buttons at the top of each slide. Figure 2 and 3 show the resultant
start and first slide, respectively.
When you move the slide show to your Web server, you can simply upload the whole
directory, including the original Powerpoint or Impress file. It might be a good
idea to rename the starting page file to something that would be meaningful to
the reader.
Tweaking your Web slide show
Unlike other HTML documents produced by OpenOffice.org, the code created
by the Impress export function is amazingly clean. The start page consists of
the HTML and head tags, some meta tags, a title, and a one column table listing
of the slides. That’s it, no extra unnecessary fluff.
Having clean code makes for easy modification.
For example, if you want to add a little more flair to your title page, start
your favorite HTML editor and add your company logo at the top or some links to
your product page on the side. And don’t forget to add your contact information at
the bottom.
You can easily add subtitles or extra commentary to each of the individual
slide files, because they also use very basic HTML, as well.
Use your imagination. The slide show files are just begging to be tweaked and
customized.
If you are going to regularly come up with new slide shows, it might be a good
idea to put a process in place and some standard company HTML code that can be
inserted into all of your presentations. No sense in re-creating everything each
time from scratch.
| Fig. 3 Your slide show in Mozilla |
Put on your show
Putting your Powerpoint or Impress slide shows on a Web site doesn’t have to be
a major ordeal, as we’ve seen.
With a tiny bit of work you can offer your audience that extra attention to
detail and set your presentation apart from all the rest. As they review your
slides, on your site, you can also make it easy for them to get familiar with
your company and its products.
Now, seize the opportunity and go make a Web based slide show using
OpenOffice.org Impress.
Rob Reilly is a consultant who
specializes in helping clients communicate effectively. Many of his published
articles explain the use of Linux, portable computing, and presentation
technology, especially as how it relates to communication in business. His
stories appear in various high-end Linux and business media outlets.
