HTML Slide Show Survey
23/Apr 2015
PowerPoint and other proprietary slide-ware, bah! We already have a universal, open system for communication called the web with a markup language for information display and navigation, so let’s explore presentation applications that produce web content.
Survey Says…
We used dynamic HTML slides at Netscape for our DevCon presentations, it was time to see what the state of the art was today! I had encountered a few solutions over the years, but I found exhaustive lists on http://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-powerpoint/ and http://alternativeto.net/software/prezi/
I was instantly productive with Landslide running in a Python virtualenv with a watchdog script for recompiling my updates in Markdown, so I chose that, but I would revisit any of the following.
Static Tools
These HTML slide systems are comprised of static HTML+CSS+JavaScript in which you author content directly.
- Biggie: Source || Demo author in Markdown, interesting forks!
- CSSS: Source || Demo || BlogPost
- Deck.js: Source || Demo
- Flowtime.js: Source || Demo 2D HUD FTW!
- Scrolldeck.js: Demo
- Shower: Source || Demo
- Stack: Source || Demo
Dynamic Tools
These HTML slide packages require compiling, but final output is static HTML+CSS+JavaScript:
- Slippy: Source || Demo
- Impress.js: Source || Demo can reproduce Prezi canvas like zooming 2D effects and animations.
- Slides: Source || Demo npm install
- Reveal.js: Source || Demo: promotes a paid visual editor site
- Landslide: Source PyPi: pip install. Compiled slides to PDF export as well!
- Slide Show (S9): Home: Ruby gem
- Google I/O-Slides: Home
- Bespoke.js: Source || Demo leverages Yeoman, Grunt, etc.
Asciidoctor
There are Asciidoctor converters for Reveal.js and Bespoke.js. I find this compelling because of the exhaustive Diagram extensions that include Graphviz, PlantUML, and Mermaid plus so many more that I’ve never heard of before!
Seems like Diagrams as Code is a growing movement.
Other Formats
I found some interesting alternate open formats for SVG and PDF Slides, a la Prezi:
Generating PowerPoint from Markdown
Because I often have to adopt the corporate or an event PPT template, I’ve been trying to find a hybrid approach to minimize the amount of time authoring inside PowerPoint. In my research, I found an R language project that can take Markdown, a PowerPoint template (there is some 4 slide standard?), and generate a .PPT.
Research: