Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Powerpoint, usability

I’ve put slides and a pdf from a talk yesterday on my homepage. Making pdf is easy on the mac, making html less so. Since this is the web, I’d like to put up html of the slides, and I think that the HTML that PPT produces is poor. In particular, I’d like smaller files, and no dependance on Javascript to make links work. Any advice?

5 comments on "Powerpoint, usability"

  • sama says:

    open text edit and type.

  • Nudecybot says:

    Hey Ad,
    I kinda like OperaShow for simplicity but it requires, javascript, sorry!
    http://my.opera.com/community/dev/operashow/
    Thanks for posting the slides, I have been interested for some time in the usefulness of APPLICATION firewalls. I always liked the approach Sanctum was taking, at least if you have lots of application vulnerabilities your software firewall should block most of them.
    Now I see there are a ton of application firewall products in development, not sure how good they are….heres the latest review I could find:
    http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0818rev2.html

  • Nudecybot says:

    Interesting debate on the benefits of Powerpoint:
    http://www.sociablemedia.com/credential_articles.htm

  • Adam says:

    Should you be able to make a living as “an independent management consultant who helps organizations solve problems related to PowerPoint” if Powerpoint didn’t need fixing?
    Sure, it is possible to do a good presentation in spite of powerpoint. James Beard once did a cooking demonstration with two electric hot plates and a bunch of tin-foil pans. For the rest of us, quality tools help us do our jobs.

  • adam says:

    Oops. That sounds harsher than I meant to sound.
    I do think there are a number of aspects of powerpoint which are wrong. First is what you see when you start: Not an outline, but a title slide, to which you’re encouraged to add slides. Imagine an alternate interface wherein you started with an outline, and when it was done, Powerpoint created presentation slides from it for you. Think how much better a presentation might be. And you could have a little auto-generated “you are here” graphic along the side.

Comments are closed.