The PowerPoint Ezine - 16

by Geetesh Bajaj

Introduction

We first discuss the new Office 2003 Public Beta that includes PowerPoint 2003 followed by a mini review of Color Wheel Pro, an excellent product that helps you visualize better colour combinations. A listing of Quick News is then followed by a discussion on viewing PowerPoint HTML presentations in fullscreen mode online. Next on the line is Sonia Coleman's Digital Studio site. We then look at Impatica's new upgrade for their OnCue product. We finish with a discussion on the usage of seamless textures in PowerPoint and a listing of upcoming seminars and events.

Office 2003 in Public Beta

Microsoft has announced a public release of the Office 2003 Beta 2 product. The upcoming release has been named the Office System 2003 - the beta itself is available at no charge except shipping and handling charges that may differ from country to country, but starts from US$19.95.

Two new products - OneNote and InfoPath make their presence in the new beta. On other fronts, the product system as a whole provides suite-wide improvements. PowerPoint gets some attention too - sometime later, I hope to provide more info about the new PowerPoint on this site.

You can request the beta kit at the Office System Beta site...

You will find some helpful info about the beta at Steve Rindsberg's PowerPoint FAQ site.

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Focus on ColorWheel Pro

Color Wheel Pro is an application that enables you to interactively create various types of colour schemes and preview them on real-world examples like corporate identities, web sites and logos.

When Nicole from Color Wheel Pro contacted me sometime ago, I thought it was just another colour mixing and swatch program - I could not have been more wrong. Color Wheel Pro is more than a program - it's an actual concept in action that's going to be a boon to anyone involved with design of any form. Color Wheel Pro's help file is much more than a help file - it's also an enlightening booklet on colour theory.

I questioned Nicole about what inspired or motivated you to develop a product of this calibre - and here's the response:

When I worked as a designer, I read an article on color theory and did some experiments with my previous designs. I was amazed at what impact color can have on the final artwork. Wisely chosen color can revitalize even bad artwork, and vice versa, a bad color scheme can completely ruin an otherwise excellent work. Finally I realized that color is an "emotion carrier" -- it can make the same artwork look energetic, soothing, mysterious or joyful.

I wanted to use color theory in my everyday work, but I didn't have a "tangible" way to see how a color scheme applies to a final project. I wished I had a program to spin the color wheel and view the resulting color scheme on lifelike pictures in real time.

When I switched to software business, I implemented this idea in Color Wheel Pro :)) This software is our "pet project", and we had a lot of fun making it.

For more info about Color Wheel Pro, visit their website...

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Quick News

Imagemat!cs has announced a major upgrade to is StillMotion Creator PE product with integration of SmartSound and FullScreen show technologies. StillMotion is a product that combines still pictures into movies with panning, rotation and zooming that output to the Flash SWF format. The upgrade is free for existing customers. More info...

Impatica in Education is an interesting review of a product that makes it so easy to create online dynamic presentations from PowerPoint content. The review is authored by Jeanie C Crain, Professor, Department of English, Foreign Languages and Journalism, Missouri Western State College. It is being made available to Indezine readers through special permission as a PDF download... (to view the PDF, you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader). In case you want to request a free Impatica product evaluation, fill in your requests here...

T-Dog Software offers a product called iBrowse that allows you to embed live web pages within your PowerPoint presentation. A demo version of the product can be downloaded from the product site. More info here...

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PowerPoint 2002 Fullscreen HTML

In the recent past, there has been quite a discussion on creating HTML output of PowerPoint 2002 presentations that run fullscreen online. Fellow MVPs Michael Koerner and Steve Rindsberg have put up additional info on their sites:

Michael has an actual fullscreen PowerPoint HTML presentation that will play fullscreen on your browser - there's a link from Michael's tutorial page.

Steve, who runs the PowerPoint FAQ site has provided some info about this on one of the FAQ pages.

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Sonia Coleman's Digital Studio

I am constantly amazed by the depth of Sonia Coleman's Digital Studio site. At last count, Sonia informed me she had over 700 pages onsite. Most of her content is related to PowerPoint - and I have to say that all the content is first-rate. I love all her pages - but here are some of my favourites:

The Quick Tricks page is chock-a-block of little-known PowerPoint info you won't find anywhere else.

Sonia has an extensive PowerPoint FAQ - a must visit.

Take a look at an extensive list of PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts.

The Tutorials page has tutorials on using PowerPoint, Bryce, Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.

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Impatica Announces OnCue 2.5

Since its release in December 2001, Impatica OnCue has enabled users to produce presentations comprised of synchronized video, PowerPoint-derived slides and scrolling searchable text, with dynamic indexing and navigation controls. Now, Impatica has announced version 2.5 of OnCue, which introduces several new features:

• The new Edit feature of Impatica OnCue takes synchronizing presentations to a new level by providing tools to cue not only slide transitions, but also paragraph advances and animation effects.
• Perfect synchronization can be achieved by simply clicking and dragging or by using Impatica's innovative new "bulldozing" mode.

More info about Impatica OnCue here...

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Seamless Textures In PowerPoint

For those who are new to this concept, seamless textures are textures that form repeating patterns when tiled one against the other. PowerPoint has a few built-in seamless textures available within the Fills options within the program. These textures can be used to fill shapes, AutoShapes, charts and backgrounds within PowerPoint.

If you use these textures often, you might end up getting bored using the same textures again and again. So, it might be good news for many of you if I were to lead you a free resource of 800 such textures on this very site that you can use anywhere on a non-commercial basis.

To access these textures, go to:

http://www.indezine.com/back/

You'll find the textures have been classified in 16 categories based on their colours - to use them in PowerPoint, click the 'Other Texture' button in the Texture tab of the Fill dialog box and navigate to the folder where you have downloaded the textures.

In case you want all 832 textures in a single download - or if you want to use the textures commercially, you can buy all the textures at ppted.com for US$40 - more info here...

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Events & Seminars

Winning Presentations Seminar
April 8 and 9, 2003
May 20 and 21, 2003
Boston, USA
Claudyne Wilder, Wilder Presentations
http://www.wilderpresentations.com/

PowerPoint Live
October 12 to 15, 2003
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Rick Altman, R Altman Digital Consulting
http://www.pptlive.com/

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Credits

During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine, I received assistance and feedback from Michael Koerner, Sonia Coleman and Taj Simmons (all in alphabetical order). I would like to use this platform to thank them for their help.

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