ActivePresentation
File:Ap sample small.jpg | |
Developer(s) | GMARK Ltd. |
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Stable release | 1.0
/ December , 2009 |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
Type | Presentation |
License | Proprietary |
Website | ActivePresentation |
ActivePresentation Suite
ActivePresentation Suite is a set of presentation programs developed by GMARK. It is an extension to the Microsoft Office PowerPoint software and runs on the Microsoft Windows computer operating system. The primary objective of ActivePresentation Suite is to overcome the serial nature of PowerPoint and provide a web like interactive interface within PowerPoint slides.
PowerPoint Usage
PowerPoint has become the ubiquitous solution for professionals to present their ideas, companies and products alike to their audience. Since its inception in 1984, PowerPoint has followed the thought process of its physical counterpart, the overhead projector, in which a presenter physically wrote the text and diagrams of the story board sequence on a roll of acetate transparencies. In both scenarios, the presenter is mandated to follow the sequential flow of the presentation material. In modern business environments, the audience is often likely to ask questions out of sequence and for a PowerPoint presenter, this can be dealt with in one of three ways. The first is to the defer the question which can be frustrating for the person raising it. The second is to rapidly press the Page Down and Page Up keys on the computer keyboard in order to find the slide with the relevant information to answer the question. The third solution and the least elegant is for the presenter to press the Escape key, which exists the slide show mode in PowerPoint, and manually locate the slide in question followed by a restart of the slide show. In all cases, the end result is one which appears unprofessional.
Serialisation versus hierarchy
The process of collecting thoughts in to chapters or sections has long existed and probably the best example of the provision of a more interactive content delivery mechanism is a modern website where content is freely navigated by the visitor to the site via a structured hierarchy. In this context, many pages, often exceeding hundreds or even thousands, are served by a web server but a user only ever retrieves and reads those pages that he/she is interested in during a particular visiting session. Intuitive navigation following the three-click rule provides multi-level structuring of the content which enables users to rapidly locate the content of interest.
Tree structured PowerPoint
An ActivePresentation adds a layer of interactive navigation to the PowerPoint file structure that presents the user with a navigable in-slide menu bar system comprising a context sensitive user interface. By providing such a layer, the presenter is able to quickly jump from one part of the presentation to another, even if the destination slide is not contiguous to the source slide. This is of particular use when presentation material is created by a Marketing communications team and then presented by a sales team.
Versions
In the first release, ActivePresentation Suite consists of a pair of software programs. ActivePresentation Designer is the application used by presentation authors to create and edit the active content of a PowerPoint presentation. ActivePresentation Viewer is the free software that allows any PowerPoint user to interpret and display the active content part of the PowerPoint file.
- 2009 ActivePresentation Designer 1.0 & ActivePresentation Viewer 1.0
File formats
Filename extension |
.ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .pptm, .ppsm |
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Internet media type |
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint |
Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) | com.microsoft.powerpoint.ppt |
Developed by | GMARK |
Type of format | Presentation |
Since ActivePresentation content is contained as extension objects within the existing PowerPoint file formats, there are no specific file format associations with an ActivePresentation and the formats supported are therefore a subset of those provided in the PowerPoint application software.
Compatibility
The ActivePresentation Suite of application software is compatible with Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 and Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. While the beta release of Microsoft Office 2010 is available for testing, the compatibility of the ActivePresentation Suite will not be evaluated until early 2010.
See also
General
Hierarchical PowerPoint Demonstrations
- Fictional Vehicle Rental Company
- Fictional Banking Company
- Fictional Telecommunications Equipment Company
- Fictional Medical Company
References
- ^ BBC article : The problem with PowerPoint
- ^ PowerPoint Presentations: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
- ^ Independent blog from a Microsoft MVP.
- ^ News tips and announcements directly from the team at Microsoft.
- ^ Platform for PowerPoint presentations, presentation software, image editing and clip media