Thoughts On Presenting & Design mike-pulsifer.org

PowerPoint 2004 vs. Keynote ’08

Having read in books and online how great Keynote was and how the pros use it over Keynote, how could I not spend the $70 on iWork and give it a spin?  The version of PowerPoint that I have to compare Keynote to isn't the latest and "greatest," but as some may argue, with the lack of macro support in Office 2008, the older, PPC-based version may be the better of the two Microsoft offerings.  Personally, all I have is 2004 and given how I can't support Microsoft's anti-competitive no-macro move, Office 2004 is what I've got.  Also keep in mind that this is based on early impressions and early, limited use, so if I'm just not figuring something out and you know the answer to what I'm looking for, then please feel free to share.

Templates

So, when I'm creating a new slide deck, I'm typically not one to use built-in templates.  In fact, given my long history with PowerPoint on Windows, that's the wise approach.  Microsoft's templates are just atrocious, hideous, and simply not professional.  For all we know, they hired a monkey to throw poo at Windows Paint.  They just aren't conducive to readability.  The template is the star of the (B-movie) show, not your content.  What's worse is that if you did want to use one of their templates, PowerPoint sure isn't that helpful.

PowerPoint Templates

You have two ways to choose you design.  One is through the formatting palette and the other is through a Finder-based dialog.  The thumbnails in the palette are too small to be useful and essentially require you to choose them one at a time to really get a good idea what it's about.  The dialog is even worse because you're choosing them by name, with no thumbnail or preview at all.

Keynote, on the other hand, actually has me considering using their templates (called themes), even if just the simpler ones.  You're presented with usable thumbnails in an easy to navigate dialog.

Keynote Templates

The themes are also quite intelligently designed.  Unlike Microsoft, Apple apparently employed real designers with a knowledge of the fundamental concepts of what makes text readable.  They are also, for the most part, simple enough to not be too distracting.  I took a PowerPoint slide deck I created and applied one of the built-in Keynote themes and got what instantly looked more professional even though the original design and Keynote theme were similar in concept.  In Keynote, it's more polished right off the bat.

Interface

PowerPoint Interface

So, now we've got our template chosen, let's take a look at the interface.

Office 2004 is famous for straddling the line when it comes to obeying the Mac Human Interface Guidelines.  On the one hand, they put the controls in a (mostly) easy to use formatting palette, yet they still give you a Windows-ish toolbar.  You can close the toolbar, but you'd lose access to some functionality, such as the format painter.  Truly bad interface design.  With that said, it's still much more elegant than the Windows version.  It's as though the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft tried to build a compliant UI, but overlords in Redmond weren't going to allow them to stray too far from the ranch.

Keynote Interface

Keynote, on the other hand, puts the toolbar, front and center, and attached to the document.  Huh?  Say what?  Yeah.  The very thing you're not supposed to do to Mac apps, Apple did.  The very thing that makes no sense (attaching toolbars to documents rather than the application itself), they did.  You know what?  I don't like it.  Yeah, they're easy to access and they're far more usable than their Windows counterparts, but I really resent losing that form of real estate.  I don't think splitting duty between the menu bar and the toolbar is good interface design.  The application/document relationship we have come to understand because it frankly makes sense has been turned sideways and upside down at once.  With that said, you can turn the toolbar off and not lose access to any functionality.  They do provide an inspector palette, which does make me feel at home, for what it's worth.

Adding slides to your deck is also different between the two.  In PowerPoint, your primary interface for this is under "Add Objects" in the palette.  I prefer to use a blank slide as a starting point when designing my slides, so I have to scroll down to find what I want.  Even if a blank slide isn't what I'm looking for, the various designs would likely require scrolling to find what you want.

Keynote takes a different approach.  When you click "New," it creates a new blank slide for you.  Hey, what do you know, it creates exactly what I want by default!  If you want to change the layout of the slide, click the Masters button in the toolbar and you'll get a list (no scrolling) of your options.  The thumbnails you are provided in the drop-down list actually have your theme applied to them so you have a better idea what you're getting yourself into than in PowerPoint.

Going Full Bleed

One of the tricks for cross-platform builds in PowerPoint is to use your full-bleed images as individual slide backgrounds.  This prevents all kinds of odd-behavior in going between PowerPoint 2003 and 2004.  One of the things that PowerPoint also does is it will scale your slide and everything in it to the resolution of your screen or projector.  Keynote provides the option to scale to the size of the screen as well, through the preferences. -added 12/14/2008 Keynote takes a different approach.  Rather than risking the distortions and pixelations that result when rescaling graphics, you create your slides with a specific resolution.  Each approach has its benefits.

PowerPoint:

• Your slides will fill up the screen no matter what you're projecting on.  You don't need to think about what type of projector you're going to be using.
• Individual slide backgrounds allow your image to be free from accidental dragging.

Pick your poison.

Design

PowerPoint Guides

One of the things that's useful when laying out graphics and images on a slide is some sort of guide that shows you the power points as defined by the rule of thirds.  When turning on guides in PowerPoint, you're presented with two guide lines, which can be moved.  In all my time using PowerPoint, I have yet to see a means with which you can add guide lines.  It's either not there or not obvious.

Keynote Guides

Keynote, on the other hand, allows you to drag new guide lines from the rulers to your slide.  In addition, the rulers just make sense.  In PowerPoint, the rulers seem to be in at least the equivalent of inches.  10 "inches" across the top and 7.2 along the side.  Each major mark (an inch, I guess) is divided into 8ths.  Since PowerPoint (Keynote won't either) doesn't give you the thirds laid out with the guides, you've got some calculations and approximations to do.  Keynote's ruler is divided into 10 major units along the top and along the side.  Each major unit is divided into 10ths.  Now, you tell me which is more useful?

Media

PowerPoint likes to throw you right into the clip-art folder whenever you want to add an image as a background (the PPT hack I described above).  I have yet to figure out a reason for this bizarre behavior.  It's extremely annoying and just obnoxious.  Given the clip art included with Office, nobody should even want to use what's in that folder.  Fortunately, adding an embedded image doesn't share this behavior.  That's good, but it also sheds light on the inconsistent and seemingly hap-hazard user interface decisions by Microsoft.

Media

Keynote offers excellent integration with iPhoto, through a media dialog that shows you what's in your iPhoto library.  Just drag and drop.  You can also choose something outside of iPhoto if you wish.  Unlike PowerPoint, though, you don't need to specify what kind of file it is before you do so.

Charts

If there's one universal truth, it's don't copy your charts from another program and paste them onto your slides unless there's just no way on this green earth your slide application can handle the task.  If you've ever seen an Excel chart pasted into a PowerPoint, you know what I mean.  Both PowerPoint and Keynote have the capability of adding charts.  However, the approaches the two applications take couldn't be more different.

PowerPoint Charts

PowerPoint starts you off with a bar chart with 3 data series and 4 data points.  The default chart is full of what Edward Tufte calls "chart junk."  It's 3D, has unnecessary borders, rules, and values on the Y-axis.  Oh, did I mention, PowerPoint launches another program for this?  While working on your PowerPoint chart, you're actually working in an application named Graph.  This isn't just a Office 2004 thing.  Office 2003 for Windows does the same thing.  PowerPoint offers a seemingly limitless palette of colors for your potentially limitless number of data series.  Of course, only if you want to lose your audience while they're trying to decipher your chart, would you use that many data points.

Keynote Charts

Keynote doesn't launch a separate application to create your charts.  The default chart starts you off with 2 data series and 4 data points.  The starter chart is also in 2D.  Big deal?  Not really.  However, it does seem to suggest to the user a smarter use of charts in this context.  The data entry mode is through a dialog and all updates are reflected in the chart real-time, unlike in PowerPoint.  Chart colors are limited to only 6 for the chart.  Though limiting, if you looking to add more than 6 data series, then you need to rethink your chart.  Any more than 6 will surely create visual clutter.  I would even find it hard to get up to that number of unique colors.  Rather than diving through dialogs for each data series like you do in PowerPoint, changing colors of individual data series is done by dragging and dropping from the chart colors dialog to the series in the chart.  This is much easier and far more efficient.

Summary, for now...

As you can see, I've very impressed with Apple's presentation slide software, Keynote '08.  For a relatively new entrant into the space, Apple has shown they have more than enough of what it takes to compete effectively and give presentation professionals a tool worth choosing, even as a first choice.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm fairly new to Keynote, so what I've shared thus far is based on early impressions.  There's more I have yet to explore, such as video integration, export options, etc.  My next article on these two applications will cover features used when presenting.  These two are in a class of their own, both far more useful in actual presentation mode than their Windows-based counterparts.