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What Does HN Recommend for Presentation Slide Creation

11 points by andrewvc 16y ago

I'm going to be making a presentation at the next LA HN meetup, and I just realized that I haven't had to make slides in ages. What software do my fellow coders recommend? I run Ubuntu, but would prefer something web based if at all possible.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago
What kind of presentation? I would strongly recommend LaTeX-based stuff (specifically, powerdot), but my presentations tend to involve quite a bit of mathematics...
- andrewvc 16y ago
  There's going to be code, only JS and Ruby though. I'd rather not have to learn latex for this to be honest. I just need simple slides, with code, and maybe a picture or two. Perhaps I'm over thinking this and should just use Google docs.
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    LaTeX is cool, but it's probably a bit more than you need. In this specific case, you may want to go with something browser-based - you could actually execute the Javascript!
thaumaturgy 16y ago
I have had good luck with 280Slides: http://www.280slides.com/ http://www.280slides.com/ But, don't expect the site to be completely without quirks. Leave yourself plenty of time to put the slides together, and export a file before your presentation just in case. I did have a little trouble getting their software to work occasionally.
- andrewvc 16y ago
  I was trying to remember the name of this site, and my google-fu was failing me. Thanks!
staunch 16y ago
Google Docs is really great for me. Might be too bare bones for some people though.
steveklabnik 16y ago
I really enjoy Keynote, if you were on a Mac. When I used Linux, I just used the Google Documents presentation maker.
dunstad 16y ago
I've presented before using html/css files. Normally I'd have used Google Docs, but formatting the code separately was too difficult.
_delirium 16y ago
I usually use LaTeX with one of the presentation packages, but if you don't already use/like LaTeX or have significant math, it might not be worth the effort. Prezi has lately been getting a lot of use at various conferences. Initially Prezi presentations got a lot of positive reception just for the novelty, but I think it's used enough these days that that part might be diminishing. http://prezi.com/ http://prezi.com/ OO Impress and Google Docs presentations are fine for relatively simple things. OO Impress can probably do more complex things too, but I find it sort of clunky to use. I actually did one presentation in just some hand-coded HTML with prev/next buttons. One advantage to that approach is that you can fairly easily include editable, executable .js code examples.
- eldila 16y ago
  Yeah, I would use Latex with the beamer-latex package.
johnpignata 16y ago
I recommend slidedown - http://github.com/nakajima/slidedown http://github.com/nakajima/slidedown. It processes markdown into great looking HTML slides that have code highlighting via pygments. I used it recently for a JavaScript presentation - http://jpignata.github.com/jasmine-bkjs http://jpignata.github.com/jasmine-bkjs
- andrewvc 16y ago
  This looks quite interesting, I just may try this.
mtodd 16y ago
There's Scott Chacon's interesting approach to presentations called ShowOff: http://github.com/schacon/showoff http://github.com/schacon/showoff
scorpion032 16y ago
The way to do a presentation has changed a lot. The way you do it today is with a image and a caption to explain the idea, when you are explaining the idea; and when you are describing a code snippet embed it. Obviously you iterate over the process. If you do it in powerpoint or keynote, it sucks. Are you manually going to copy paste the code every time? Use latex with beamer class. Even tho' it is old, when customized, it _is_ still the best way to do presentations. <shameless plug> I created a (what I believe is) awesome presntation: http://www.slideshare.net/scorpion032/building-pluggable-web-applications-using-django http://www.slideshare.net/scorpion032/building-pluggable-web... using Beamer class and here are the custom commands used: http://github.com/becomingGuru/gids-django-ppt/blob/master/contents.tex http://github.com/becomingGuru/gids-django-ppt/blob/master/c... </shameless plug>
carpdiem 16y ago
If it's simple, then just about anything (including Google Docs) will do fine for you. But if you have a complex presentation, or you're a stickler for detail, I recommend creating each of your slides in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator, and stitching them together with something else. It's the only way to get the design just right.

11 points by andrewvc 16y ago

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

What kind of presentation? I would strongly recommend LaTeX-based stuff (specifically, powerdot), but my presentations tend to involve quite a bit of mathematics...

andrewvc 16y ago
There's going to be code, only JS and Ruby though. I'd rather not have to learn latex for this to be honest. I just need simple slides, with code, and maybe a picture or two. Perhaps I'm over thinking this and should just use Google docs.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  LaTeX is cool, but it's probably a bit more than you need. In this specific case, you may want to go with something browser-based - you could actually execute the Javascript!

thaumaturgy 16y ago

I have had good luck with 280Slides: http://www.280slides.com/ http://www.280slides.com/ But, don't expect the site to be completely without quirks. Leave yourself plenty of time to put the slides together, and export a file before your presentation just in case. I did have a little trouble getting their software to work occasionally.

andrewvc 16y ago
I was trying to remember the name of this site, and my google-fu was failing me. Thanks!

staunch 16y ago

Google Docs is really great for me. Might be too bare bones for some people though.

steveklabnik 16y ago

I really enjoy Keynote, if you were on a Mac. When I used Linux, I just used the Google Documents presentation maker.

dunstad 16y ago

I've presented before using html/css files. Normally I'd have used Google Docs, but formatting the code separately was too difficult.

_delirium 16y ago

I usually use LaTeX with one of the presentation packages, but if you don't already use/like LaTeX or have significant math, it might not be worth the effort. Prezi has lately been getting a lot of use at various conferences. Initially Prezi presentations got a lot of positive reception just for the novelty, but I think it's used enough these days that that part might be diminishing. http://prezi.com/ http://prezi.com/ OO Impress and Google Docs presentations are fine for relatively simple things. OO Impress can probably do more complex things too, but I find it sort of clunky to use. I actually did one presentation in just some hand-coded HTML with prev/next buttons. One advantage to that approach is that you can fairly easily include editable, executable .js code examples.

eldila 16y ago
Yeah, I would use Latex with the beamer-latex package.

johnpignata 16y ago

I recommend slidedown - http://github.com/nakajima/slidedown http://github.com/nakajima/slidedown. It processes markdown into great looking HTML slides that have code highlighting via pygments. I used it recently for a JavaScript presentation - http://jpignata.github.com/jasmine-bkjs http://jpignata.github.com/jasmine-bkjs

andrewvc 16y ago
This looks quite interesting, I just may try this.

mtodd 16y ago

There's Scott Chacon's interesting approach to presentations called ShowOff: http://github.com/schacon/showoff http://github.com/schacon/showoff

scorpion032 16y ago

The way to do a presentation has changed a lot. The way you do it today is with a image and a caption to explain the idea, when you are explaining the idea; and when you are describing a code snippet embed it. Obviously you iterate over the process. If you do it in powerpoint or keynote, it sucks. Are you manually going to copy paste the code every time? Use latex with beamer class. Even tho' it is old, when customized, it _is_ still the best way to do presentations. <shameless plug> I created a (what I believe is) awesome presntation: http://www.slideshare.net/scorpion032/building-pluggable-web-applications-using-django http://www.slideshare.net/scorpion032/building-pluggable-web... using Beamer class and here are the custom commands used: http://github.com/becomingGuru/gids-django-ppt/blob/master/contents.tex http://github.com/becomingGuru/gids-django-ppt/blob/master/c... </shameless plug>

carpdiem 16y ago

If it's simple, then just about anything (including Google Docs) will do fine for you. But if you have a complex presentation, or you're a stickler for detail, I recommend creating each of your slides in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator, and stitching them together with something else. It's the only way to get the design just right.