Timeline 3D: A Review
If you're a Mac user like me, you might be aware of those software bundle deals like Mac Heist and MacUpdate Promo. I bought the promo bundle last year, which gave me $500 of legit, full-featured (not demo) software for $50. It's hard to beat that. This year's bundle wasn't as impressive dollar-wise ($376-worth of software for $50), but what caught my eye was Timeline 3D from BeeDocs. Normally, this is $65. That's $15 off just for buying it in the bundle. There's some other cool stuff in the bundle that I'll surely make use of, but what I'm writing about today is Timeline 3D.
What really caught my attention with Timeline 3D was its ability to export to Keynote. If there's one thing that I find most difficult in designing slides, it's putting date-based information (e.g. a timeline) in a slide format that is easy to read and understand and also professional looking. When giving presentations about the status of a project, this can be a very real and daunting challenge. Often, people will just copy and paste from Microsoft Project. The problem is, these are difficult to read and understand, likely to create map shock, and frankly, don't look professional. This is where Timeline 3D steps in and makes, in my opinion, a valiant effort. If that doesn't sound convincing or you think I'm advising against this software, read on. As with anything, the answer to whether you should use this for your timelines is "it depends."
Creating a new timeline
Creating a new timeline
Getting Started
When you first launch Timeline 3D, you're presented with an impressive selection of themes and data import options. Since your slide designs will likely not match what this software offers, the themes are a decent starting point, but not as important as the import options. Timeline 3D gives an amazing set of options, including importing from Basecamp, iCal, and RSS feeds. You can, of course, just work from a blank timeline if you wish.
Adding events is quite simple. Just make sure that in your date settings that you have the format chosen that works best for your events. For example, if the day isn't of concern to you, make sure you choose the appropriate format or else the software may yell at you for having an improperly-formatted date.
Visually, what you get is quite impressive. You can even assign images to your events to reinforce the point. A nice touch is the ability to pull images in from iPhoto using the built-in "Photos" panel. However, keep in mind the size of the images when you insert them. Resize them down to an appropriate size when you can to avoid corrupting your timeline file. When building a timeline for my day job, I didn't resize my images, many of which were quite large, and my data file edged over 11 MB in size. At this point, the document became unusable and my system unstable (Timeline 3D trial, 20" iMac w/Snow Leopard & 2 GB of RAM). After closing the application, I could not reopen the file. I couldn't even open it on my MacBook Pro (Timeline 3D fully registered, Snow Leopard, & 4 GB RAM. The file, along with a whole morning's worth of work was toast.
Events with date ranges
Another issue I ran into was the lack of customization. Though you can change fonts and colors, you're stuck with very thin lines to represent the date ranges of your events. This makes it quite difficult if your screen isn't big enough for your room (as is nearly always the case where I work). An option to make the lines thicker is a must-have enhancement that I would like to see in the next version.
Of course, I must mention the 3D aspect of this tool. This is the key feature that makes your events visible to your audience when a view of the timeline as a whole makes them too small to even be noticed. They accomplish this by taking the canvas of your timeline and angling it toward the viewer. Then, as you advance through your timeline, you move down the length of the canvas stopping at each item as they fly out much like a door. This can be quite effective as you call out each individual event. However, this feature still can't save the software from the event range lines that are far too thin.
Another issue that I ran into at work on both the trial and fully registered versions of the software was the duplication of events. When I went into the bulk edit view (spreadsheet-like option for entering events), each event was duplicated. This became a problem when exporting the timeline to Quicktime.
Exporting
Exporting is where you get your real use out of this software. You can export it to email (static image), to certain devices (Apple TV, iPhone, and iPod), to QuickTime, or to Keynote. When exporting to Quicktime, though you can choose sizes smaller than 480p, it's not advisable. Anything smaller than 480p is just not readable. Also note that depending on the size of your timeline, the movies can be really REALLY huge. I mean monsterous. This is where the event duplication issue caused problems for me. It was a timeline with roughly 45 events. Upon exporting, it processed the events just fine, but when it was done, rendered another 44 phantom events on a completed timeline frozen in time. This made the movie double the necessary length and had me staring at the portion just a few seconds before the end sequence for half of the length of the movie. All told, the final movie was 1.6 GB in size.
Exporting to Keynote gives you two options. The first is static images. Though this option lacks the dynamic transitions from event to event, it is the most lightweight. Each fly-out event is represented on a slide in the deck created by Timeline 3D. Below is an example using my Posterous's RSS feed and the static Keynote export option.
Exporting your timeline in movie format produces the best looking product. The progression of the timeline is smooth and flawless as long as you go forward in time. That's because each event is given its own slide in your deck as with the static option, but instead of an image, each slide contains a short movie. This kind of quality and impressive presentation comes at a cost, however. Each individual movie is saved in a folder named Timeline Exports in your Movies folder. For the timeline example below, it saved 22 movies totaling 248 MB. That's pretty unwieldy if you're ever asked to share your deck or if you need to continue working on it on a different machine.
Below is an example using my Posterous's RSS feed and the movie Keynote export option.
The Verdict
This surely doesn't seem like a glowing review. It certainly has its flaws. Depending on how you'd use it, those flaws are either pretty minor or deal-killers. As with all design tools used in creating presentation slides, this one should be used with caution. Until the major flaws are fixed, think about your audience and the environment (room, projector, screen/monitor). Is it worth the $65? Again, it depends. For some, it's a no-brainer. For others, it may be best to see what Bee Documents comes up with for version 3.0. Do I feel that I got my money's worth? The answer to that would be a qualified "yes."
Sacred Cow #6: The Audience Wants A Detailed Agenda
We’ve all seen slides like this. It’s your standard title and bullet list slide. The title is “Agenda” and below it is a detailed list of each topic that will be discussed. Oh, don’t forget the Q&A at the end.
Why do we see these slides all the time? They’re not really helpful. They encourage us to read and not listen. Many times, they practically tell the story or enough to give you a false impression of what the story actually is. What we have here is the sixth sacred cow of presentation slides: The Detailed Agenda.
This qualifies as a sacred cow because the only reason people seem to waste our time with these slides is because that’s the way it’s always been done. That, as we know, is what defines a sacred cow. And like all sacred cows, this too needs to be turned into hamburger before the charcoal goes out.
Now I’m not suggesting that you ditch your agenda slides. It’s important to let the audience know what you’re going to be talking about. A couple effective ways I have seen this done is when Steve Jobs tells us he’s going to show us 3 cool new products. There’s no slide saying this or even what they are. He will, however, have each product introduced by a big number (1, 2, or 3), followed by the product or a series of suspense-building slides (think the intro of the iPhone). The beauty of this is that the agenda is simple and memorable. By not using slides, it helps build suspense. Alternatively, you can tell your audience the three things you will be talking about and proceed. This works if they’re simple, logical, and almost obvious.
If you are going to put your agenda on slides, try an approach that doesn’t turn your audience off just as you’re getting started. Stay away, if you can, from the unimaginative agenda = title + bullet x (n). Of course, it should be visually consistent with your deck’s overal all design as well as be content-appropriate. In the embedded slide deck below, consider the following possibilities:
Conversational Style. Instead of just saying “Agenda,” try something like, “What we’re going to talk about today.” Being rigid and stand-offish can alienate your audience and discourage them from giving you the attention you want. This is a time to focus their attention on what you want to share with them.
Pie Chart. Yeah, this is a bit off the wall, but go ahead and create a pie chart with the pie values being the amount of minutes you intend to spend on each section. The pie slices give a visual representation of how much time you intend to spend on each topic, which would be more effective at facilitating storing this information in memory than using text alone would be. Don’t display the values, but rather the labels. Make each pie slice come in one at a time. Oh, and despite how bad 3D charts are for data, this is a time where you should feel free to go 3D.
Call-outs On A Timeline. Create a line across your slide that represents the intended length of your presentation. At the appropriate times along the timeline, insert call-outs for each topic. Again, bring them in one at a time. Because time is linear, this is by far more effective than the pie chart approach and infinitely more effective than simple bullets.
Blocks On A Timeline. Another timeline-based approach is to take boxes and add them to the timeline one after the other, each representing a topic.
There is no one way to share your agenda, but displaying a detailed or even a simple, yet unoriginal agenda slide does you no favors. Get creative. Try any of these ideas or come up with your own creative way to let your audience know quickly, simply, and effectively what you’ll be talking about.
Image credit: xcode, used under a Creative Commons license.
Make Your Data Pop
Think what you will of him or his opinions, but Glenn Beck was the stereotypical presenter sharing data in tabular format on slides.
Some slides were more effective than others and some highlighted the perils of adding bullets after bullets or even rows after rows. You're forced to shrink the text and the message gets lost in the delivery.
Now, no matter what your data is, even if it has little economic, political, or scientific importance, it's critical to never manipulate the data. What you can and should do is format the data so that not only is it as truthful as it is in its rawest form, but that the underlying message is brought out more clearly.
With that said, let's look at a recreation of one of the slides he showed:
Within the wall of text, there's a message in there somewhere. OK, 13% believe that if you earn between $151,000 and $250,000, you're rich. Fine. Does that mean those same people think that if you earn outside that range, say $269,000, you're not rich? Of course not. That's a given, logically. Being "rich" is a state of positive wealth. You're not less rich if you're more wealthy. It's just impossible. It's a conclusion that couldn't be honestly debated even by the most semantically-obsessed individuals. Here's the key: If you're going to draw conclusions from the raw data, make sure you're on solid ground. If the data and conclusions were presented in a meeting or conference, provide the raw data in the handouts. Not only does it free the presentation from slides that make the audience work too hard to decipher, but it gives you a certain amount of transparency that shows you didn't monkey with the data to force it into the conclusion that you desired.
So, our first step is to get the data out of the table and into a chart. Since we're dealing with percentages, a pie chart is the way to go.
The pie chart using the data from the table really doesn't tell us anything that the table doesn't already tell us. It just gives the numbers a visual sense of scale. However, watching the video clip (starting at 4:41), Glenn makes his point that 20% of those polled thought those making $251,000 or more are rich. Well, based on the logic we observed above, that's not true. What we have here is not only a poorly designed slide, but an inability to read a data table.
If you apply the logic that anyone who thinks that someone making anywhere less than $251,000 is rich would also think that someone making $501,000 or more is rich, then you can create the following chart:
If you speak to Glenn's statement regarding the number of people who thought you're rich if you make more than $251,000, then you'd have the following chart:
That's a different percentage than he gave, isn't it? Well, as I said, he apparently has trouble reading data tables. What we have here as well is a slide that makes the point he was trying to make much more clearly and with more impact. Applying the same logic to the other poll answers yields:
If you want to make your data really pop and help you drive your message home, consider and focus on your message. Display the data in a way that reinforces your message, yet maintains the integrity and fidelity of the data.
DIY Stock Photography
Have you run into a situation where you need a photo for a slide and you either can't find one that works and looks just right on services such as iStockPhoto or for a shot like this, you can't justify paying for a photo of some Sharpies? You can try the Creative Commons route at flickr, but even then it's a crap-shoot whether you'll find something worthy of being included among your slides.
Well, a lot of us presenting slide design bloggers have suggested using your own photos in place of stock photos when you can. Not only can it be cheaper, but you're guaranteed to be the first to use that particular photo.
I faced this particular issue recently when working on a personal project of mine. I needed two different photos: 1) Sharpies and 2) Tools that can support the message "layout." Nothing good was coming up on iStockPhoto and frankly, for at least the photo of Sharpies, I just couldn't bring myself to spend the $3 for it. Nothing of use was coming up on my http://www.behold.cc search either. So, what could I do? Well, there are a couple do it yourself options.
DIY Studio Lighting
In the ShutterTalk article, "Putting Together a Budget DIY Lighting System," they show you how for about $75, you can assemble a decent on-the-cheap lighting system to help you photograph items indoors. It's something I definitely intend to assemble at some point, especially when I don't have reliable weather to make use of the cheapest lighting around: the sun.
A Solution For the Really Cheap
Sharpies
However, on this occasion, I didn't have the time or the $75 (I really need to replace my 5-year old computer). What I did have was a $15 white board that I use for my brainstorming and slide design work. A white sheet would have been better, but I'm working with what I've got.
I also had a clear day with plenty of sun. It was 10 AM, so the lighting was awfully harsh and taking the shot within two hours of sunrise or sunset would have been better, but with the winter sun as low as it is this time of the year, I thought I could get away with it.
Tools
I set up my white board on my driveway and arranged my subjects on the white board with the composition I was looking for and with the sun to my side. For those who may not know, I chose to have the sun at my side so I can get the shadows I need to give my photos a feel of some depth and not something that feels flat.
I took my shots, cleaned them up a bit in Photoshop and got myself the slide images I was looking for for a grand total of $0. If you don't count the fact that I already owned the white board, then the cost for this set up was $15 for the white board or $19 for some white sheets at Walmart.
If you use your own photography, then you can avoid appearing unoriginal. For as little as $15 or $75, you can give yourself the tools you need to help you get the shot you've been looking for.
What I’d Like To See In Slide Design In 2009
Over on the Speaking about Presenting blog, Olivia Mitchell asked what everyone else would like to see this year in slide design. I've got a really long list of things I'd like to see this year, but I'll focus on the top 3 on my list:
Less Organizational Inertia
Quite often, one of the reasons why we get battered with walls of text, riddled with bullets, beat senseless with charts and diagrams is organizational culture. It's they way it's been done for years and the bad habits have permeated the organization to the point of it being very much part of its culture. Well, organizational culture is one thing. Organizational Inertia is another. This is where the culture of PowerPoint abuse goes beyond culture and becomes either law or accepted truth.
The former can be addressed because there's opportunity to sell the organization on a better way, especially since a case can be made for the positive effect on the bottom line. The later, accepted truth, is what drives the most intransigent forms of organizational inertia. Here, you're dealing with small minds. People too closed minded and set in their ways to consider oportunities for self improvement. Why strive for self improvement when there's nothing to improve, right? "It's worked this long (meaning, people haven't actually died from it), and it's what people expect, so why change it?" I've heard that enough to make my ears bleed.
There's no easy solution and each organization requires a different approach to countering organizational inertia, but the less of it I see in 2009, the happier I will be.
Simpler Diagrams
Working in the world of IT, I probably see more than my fair share of overly complex diagrams slapped on slides. Someone starts feeling a little industrious while slapping together their barrage of bullet points to create highly detailed diagrams. Many of these are created in Visio and pasted into slides. Many others are created within PowerPoint itself. The thought that does not appear to go into these diagrams concern the very people that need to interpret them.
Text is inevitably too small. When pasting these big diagrams onto slides, quite often the diagram itself has to be shrunk to fit onto the slide. What results is text that is far too small to be read by most people. If they're sitting in the back of the room, you might as well forget it. Simplicity and information (not data) density are goals that would aid legibility. Edward Tufte's books are a great resource in this regard, especially Envisioning Information
Metaphors get lost on the audience. Quite often, visual metaphors in the diagrams, whether or not the creator realized they were creating them, don't jive with the expecations and understanding of the audience. Where I work, these kinds of slides are shown to audiences that are mixtures of technical and non-technical people. Within the group of technical people, you'll have varying degrees of expertise and specialties. Metaphors need to be kept simple and as universal as possible.
There's often just too much stuff. They're just too complex. Presenting your audience with very complex, even if just visually complex, diagrams steals their attention away from you. In The Information Design Handbook
An End To Slides As Handouts
All too often, slide decks are assembled with the intention that they also serve as handouts. Well designed slides are terrible handouts since they lack the on-slide text necessary to form an informative narrative. What the audience is left with is a presentation that is ineffective and handouts that have no value to the people they're passed on to or kept by because they still need explanation. You can never fit enough text on a slide to make them useful handouts. At the same time, you all too can easily have too much text on a slide, rendering them useless in a presentation.
There are many solutions to this approach, but one that I think helps by not only creating handouts (that are distributed after the presentation) but also helps you prepare your talk is to write out a narrative of your talk. Include the visuals. You're not going to write every last thing you're going to say. However, you'll have enough down on paper to be useful while giving yourself a chance to learn your presentation before you even start rehearsing it.
These are the top three things I'd like to see in slide design this year. Do you have any others? Have you run into the same issues I have? Feel free to comment below.
Improve Your Slide’s Charts
Types of slides that we often create are those that try to present data to our audience. All too often, this data is placed in a cluttered data table or worse, is presented in a narrative format. In most cases, a chart of some sort is the appropriate method of presenting data. However, there is an art to doing it right. A poorly formatted chart can be just as bad as that useless narrative on the screen.
In my experience, I've seen far more bad charts than effective ones. Often, the reason is expedience or because someone decided "hey, this looks cool!" An exotic sports car with a broken transmission may look very cool, but it's not going to get anywhere. Likewise, a poorly thought-out chart may look cool, but it's useless without an explanation.
We've got 3 seconds for that chart to convey its information in support of our story.
When creating a chart, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is, "what is the most important information?" The key words there are "most important" and "information." Information and data are not the same. Data are the raw numbers and figures. There's nothing more to them. Information is the message or story being told by the data. Data by itself will not translate into information. What we do to the data will provide us with information.
Secondly, we need to focus on which information is most important. Depending on how you present your data, the information will be different. I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "Lies, lies, and damned statistics." Well, it's true. How you manipulate or present data affects the message being presented. Let's look at two charts that contain the same data, but because of a different presentation, tell a different story.
Bad Pie Chart
For this example, I took the number of level 80 characters is one of my World of Warcraft guilds and created two different charts. The data is exactly the same in each. In the pie chart, the data is represented as percentages of the total while in the bar chart, the data is represented by the raw numbers. The message contained within both, while truthful, are misleading. In the pie chart, you have a large number of slices that well crammed into one chart minimizes the difference between them. Though you can interpret correctly that there are twice as many druids as there are warlocks, the visual and mental effort required to get there is more than is necessary. Without the labels, all we can do is guess at the relative values. In addition, since all we see are percentages (fractions of one whole pie), we lack any information about the size of the guild.
Keynote Bar Chart (before)
The bar chart tells a completely different story. Here, you've got a more apparent representation of the relative class populations. Is the chart poorly formatted? You bet. I'll get to that in a moment. However, in this example, it's immediately apparent that the warlock population is very small. A simple glance and the two bars tells that story in 3 seconds or less.
Bar Charts
Now, with that said, the relative populations of each of the classes is not what my most important information was. The information I wanted to convey was the population of death knights, added to World of Warcraft this past November, relative to to the other classes. The other bar chart example, this time from PowerPoint also fails to convey this information. In both the Keynote and PowerPoint examples, the chart settings were left mostly to their defaults. Below are the major problems with these charts:
PowerPoint Bar Chart (before)
- 3D In this example, PowerPoint's default is to present a 3D chart. The problem with 3D bar charts is that they lie to us. They give the bars more surface area than is necessary, and which is often out of proportion with reality, especially for the smaller bars. Take for example, the same chart displaying data for one of my other guilds. This chart has two bars with a value of 0, yet they have surface area. Thus, visually, these two bars appear to have value when in fact they don't.
- Inappropriate Title These charts are titled, "Classes - D'Gentlemen." Though it is true that these charts are displaying the number of level 80 characters in D'Gentlemen, sorted by class, that's not the most important information. What's most important is the number of death knights relative to the other classes.
PowerPoint Bar Chart #2
- Bar Colors Obscure the Message When displaying multiple data points, it's not necessary to always give them their own color. Remember, what's most important in these charts isn't each bar relative to the other 9. What's most important is the value of one specific bar relative to the other 9.
- Sort Order Obscures the Message When displaying multiple data points, be mindful of the sort order. Sorting them alphabetically doesn't always make sense. Reordering the bars by value (alphabetically as a secondary sort) drives home to the audience the relative population of death knights in a manner that takes very little visual effort. The eyes don't have to bounce all around the chart to put all the pieces together.
Keynote Bar Chart (after)
- Chart Junk Edward Tufte refers to the stuff on a chart that doesn't add value to the chart "chart junk." In this case, the border of the chart, the grid lines, legends, and the numbers down the left all contribute to a data:ink ratio that is out of whack. None of that contributes to the easy absorption of the data. Because of limitations of presentation slide software and the nature of the data, our best option here is to place the value of the data points right there on the bars.
PowerPoint Bar Chart (after)
Once we clean up the problem areas of these charts, we're presented with two completely different representations of the same exact data. However, this time, the information that is most important is what is conveyed to the audience. The title was changed to "Death Knights - D'Gentlemen," the data points were reordered and all of the bars, with the exception of "Death Knight," are the same color.
Pie Charts
Keynote Pie Chart (before)
Another popular chart type is the pie chart. One key thing to remember with these charts is the information conveyed is always the data point as a percentage of the whole. Even if the labels show raw numbers instead of percentages, the message that your audience receives is that of a percentage or fraction.
PowerPoint Pie Chart (before)
My two examples of the before versions of PowerPoint and Keynote slides are of the 3D variety. Though not the default, they are by far the most popular. These charts are intended to convey the population distribution among the different races in my World of Warcraft guild. Let's look at where these charts fail us:
- 3D It can't be said enough that 3D charts lie. In the Keynote example, the 10% slices look just a little bigger than they should, all because of the illusion of perspective. In the PowerPoint example, because the gray slice is just as tall as the green slice, the gray slice appears to be bigger. This is because with a 3D pie laid out as it is, our brain expects the gray slice to be shorter. The rules of perspective dictate that identical height objects at different distances appear to be different heights, with the one furthest away being the smaller. You also have the same problem you have with bar charts where smaller data points get extra surface area than they should get, proportionately.
Keynote Pie Chart (after)
- Texture and Colors The Keynote example is using its default fill texture. Marble doesn't add any value and instead distracts the eyes with a lot of visual noise. Many extraneous lines are added when only a few, those that separate the pie slices, are important. The PowerPoint slide uses colors that just don't contrast enough and lets slices "hide."
- Lack Of Values Leads To Guessing The lack of data values in the PowerPoint example leads to guessing about the relative sizes of the slices. The legends in both leave a lot to be desired, but Keynote can move that information to the slices without compromising too much (depending on the slice sizes). PowerPoint can move this information to the slices as well, but the size of the chart is sacrificed too much.
PowerPoint Pie Chart (after)
- Chart Junk The PowerPoint example contains the usual chart junk: chart borders and slice outlines.
I cleaned up the charts by flattening the charts, simplifying the colors & textures, using more dense and informational labels (where I could), and eliminating chart junk. The new slides should be more effective when presented to an audience.
PowerPoint 2004 vs. Keynote ’08 – Part 2
In my last post, I looked at the basic features of PowerPoint 2004 and Keynote '08. This time, I'm going to take a look at the two applications from the viewpoint of someone preparing to or actually delivering their presentation. I will also be looking at the various export options should you need to make your slide deck available after your presentation or if your delivery method needs to be a little unorthodox. (Note: I have corrected in an error in my last post. Diving into Preferences does amazing things.)
Adapting To Your Audience
If you're someone that delivers the same presentation to several audiences, you might find that you have to customize your deck, either adding or removing slides. In PowerPoint, your solution is to create a custom show. You have to choose Slide Show --> Custom Shows --> New and select the slides you want and reorder them if necessary. The functionality is quite buried and you're forced to go through quite a bit of effort just to exclude one or more slides.
Keynote provides a "skip slide" option that allows you to do just what it says: skip the slide. The slide is still in the deck. Nothing's deleted. However, when playing the slide show, you won't see the skipped slides.
Rehearsing
Rehearse in PowerPoint
Both PowerPoint and Keynote offer options for rehearsing your delivery. Both assume (correctly for most of us, I presume; myself not included) that when rehearsing, we have just one monitor. PowerPoint displays the slide, full screen, with a small (and I mean tiny) timer in the bottom right corner. It's as though you're presenting while looking at the big screen and your back's to the audience. Certainly not what you would be doing if it were real; at least I hope not.
Rehearse in Keynote
Keynote takes a different approach. Keynote displays what the presenter would see if they had their laptop in front of them while facing the audience. The benefit is clear. The closer the practice environment is to the real thing, the more comfortable and natural the presenter will be when the heat is on.
Show Time!
PowerPoint Options
When it's time to deliver our presentation, if we can have access to our laptop's screen, then it would be helpful for it to display what we need and only what we need, if anything. It should be no surprise that both PowerPoint and Keynote offer a customizable display. It should also be no surprise that both differ in their approach and their depth of customizability.
Presenting in PowerPoint
PowerPoint's customization options are very limited, allowing us to only change the playback options. There are no options for changing the appearance of what the presenter sees.
Slideshow Options in Keynote
Keynote provides more options for the presenter, providing two tabs in the preferences window: one for the slideshow and one for the presenter display. There is even an option to edit the layout of the screen that the presenter sees by dragging the various objects around in addition to adding and removing elements. You even have the option to change the timer display.
Presenter Options in Keynote
Presenting in Keynote
Recording Yourself
Audio Options in PowerPoint
Both PowerPoint and Keynote offer the option to record your speech as you step through the slides. Keynote allows you to record your audio or add a soundtrack from within the inspector. You can add your soundtrack from iTunes, which is more functional than any file system. PowerPoint has a separate dialog for recording your audio and only allows you to add a soundtrack through the "Make Movie" option in the file menu. PowerPoint doesn't offer any integration with iTunes.
Audio Options in Keynote
Exporting
Both applications allow you to export your slide deck to a wide variety of formats. What does seem clear from the options, tough is that while Microsoft's options are mostly just different means to dump output to different image formats, Apple thought about how the audience might want or need to consume the content. Below are the options:
| PowerPoint | Keynote |
|---|---|
| QuickTime Movie | |
| PDF (print dialog) | PDF* |
| JPEG* | |
| PNG* | |
| TIFF* | |
| PICT | PPT |
| GIF | Flash (can include audio) |
| BMP | iPod |
| Web Page | |
* = Keynote allows you to step through slide builds.
All in all, you'll probably find PowerPoint 2004 could still work for you if you need to use it once in a blue moon and if you already have it. However, if you use presentation slide software with any regularity or if you're choosing between PowerPoint or Keynote, save your money and use the less expensive tool that the pros apparently have good reason to use: Keynote.
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.
- Almost all projectors project at 1024x768, so scaling may not be an issue.
- No distortions or pixelation of images
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.
