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There's only one problem that's holding me back from switching to HTML/SVG/CSS/JS for my slides: the problem of monitor/projector resolution scale. Most project

by ac 15y ago

There's only one problem that's holding me back from switching to HTML/SVG/CSS/JS for my slides: the problem of monitor/projector resolution scale. Most projectors I've presented on had a low resolution: 640x480 or 800x600. Let's say my monitor has a 1600x900 resolution, so if I develop in that resolution, my presentation would break (or at least it wouldn't look as I expect it to). Presentation software and PDF viewers take care of that for me: what you see on the screen is what you would get on the projector (i.e. the text and graphics would have the same relative height&width as on the screen). Is there any reliable way to achieve that in HTML presentations as well?

CJefferson 15y ago
Yes, I also find this the major thing holding me back from HTML presentations. I wrote a HTML presentation for a conference and didn't realise this was a problem until I came to present it, and found out there doesn't seem to be any way to cleanly enlarge / shrink HTML. EDIT: After a very quick reply to a bug report, I decided to try zoom in/out in Chrome. For anyone else who hasn't tried this in a very long time, the zoom in/out actually does a very good job, allowing me to resize slides to the correct size. Some time after the introduction of CSS2 I found zoom in/out became useless. Turns out at some point it became useful again.
- ac 15y ago
  That's good and I'll definitely try Chrome. But, wouldn't it be great if the library/framework just took care of that? In fact, one of the frameworks -- Shining -- referred from the other post has a JavaScript plug-in that seems to do the resizing for different resolutions (although it's implemented in the ugliest way possible, IMO).
  - troels 15y ago
    I believe both firefox and ie does fine with zoom as well. No need to support edge cases in a library like thia, imho.
    - nitrogen 15y ago
      Scaling a presentation is not an edge case -- as other commenters have mentioned, working with undesirable screen resolutions is the default for presenters. It would be better to have the presentation scale automatically to the window size than to have to press Ctrl+/Ctrl- to try to get it reasonably close.
- AdamTReineke 15y ago
  My understanding is that, for a while, browser zoom would only scale em values and (of course) percentages. Pixel values stayed fixed regardless of the zoom. Recently, browsers began scaling pixel values as well and most modern browsers can now zoom quite nicely. [citation needed]
  - plq 15y ago
    as usual, opera was first to implement that, a looong time ago. it also has auto fit width/height options, so i think it deserves a try as well.
    - alwillis 15y ago
      Pretty sure IE 5 for the Mac was the first browser to implement that feature back in the day.
ac 15y ago
I've been looking to switch from PowerPoint (OO Impress in fact) and LaTeX beamer to something else for some time, because none of them did everything I needed: * I like LaTeX/beamer for the declarative style. If I need a two-column layout on my slide, I just type it in and it works. If I need to reveal parts of the slide step-by-step, I just type in \pause and it works. Also, I rarely need to adjust the font sizes etc.: the defaults are just sensible, if not outright beautiful. And, also, custom themes and goodies like the progress indicators are great (see the Singapore theme). * I like Impress for the fact that I have a fine grained control over a layout, should I need a something that goes beyond a columns/rows layout. Also, I can import and resize graphics without pain (in LaTeX it takes time). Also, I have more choice of animations, but adding them is very time consuming. Finally, I don't need to rebuild the slides after the tiniest change as with LaTeX. The HTML/SVG/CSS/JS seemed to have a potential to offer the best of both worlds, but the scaling problem (as described above) was throwing me back. In the process I've written down a list of features for my dream presentation tool: * beautiful typography * flexible layout: I should be able to specify the layout declaratively (e.g. two columns and a header, or a header, block of text and a table) with the tool figuring out the rest (font sizes, margins, etc) or fine-tune it manually where I can specify the font sizes and positions of every element * themes and widgets (progress indicators, timers, slide numbers etc) * should be easy to embed pictures and diagrams with scriptable animations (SVG+JS seems to be ideal for it, and I've used Inkscape for a while). The animations should be: rotation, translation, resizing, showing/hiding, change of color and zooming (the latter one being the only thing that I'm missing in both LaTeX and PowerPoint/Impress). * being able to edit the presentation on the fly. I don't want to rebuild the slides every time I fix a typo.

by ac 15y ago

CJefferson 15y ago

Yes, I also find this the major thing holding me back from HTML presentations. I wrote a HTML presentation for a conference and didn't realise this was a problem until I came to present it, and found out there doesn't seem to be any way to cleanly enlarge / shrink HTML. EDIT: After a very quick reply to a bug report, I decided to try zoom in/out in Chrome. For anyone else who hasn't tried this in a very long time, the zoom in/out actually does a very good job, allowing me to resize slides to the correct size. Some time after the introduction of CSS2 I found zoom in/out became useless. Turns out at some point it became useful again.

ac 15y ago
That's good and I'll definitely try Chrome. But, wouldn't it be great if the library/framework just took care of that? In fact, one of the frameworks -- Shining -- referred from the other post has a JavaScript plug-in that seems to do the resizing for different resolutions (although it's implemented in the ugliest way possible, IMO).
- troels 15y ago
  I believe both firefox and ie does fine with zoom as well. No need to support edge cases in a library like thia, imho.
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Scaling a presentation is not an edge case -- as other commenters have mentioned, working with undesirable screen resolutions is the default for presenters. It would be better to have the presentation scale automatically to the window size than to have to press Ctrl+/Ctrl- to try to get it reasonably close.
AdamTReineke 15y ago
My understanding is that, for a while, browser zoom would only scale em values and (of course) percentages. Pixel values stayed fixed regardless of the zoom. Recently, browsers began scaling pixel values as well and most modern browsers can now zoom quite nicely. [citation needed]
- plq 15y ago
  as usual, opera was first to implement that, a looong time ago. it also has auto fit width/height options, so i think it deserves a try as well.
  - alwillis 15y ago
    Pretty sure IE 5 for the Mac was the first browser to implement that feature back in the day.

ac 15y ago

I've been looking to switch from PowerPoint (OO Impress in fact) and LaTeX beamer to something else for some time, because none of them did everything I needed: * I like LaTeX/beamer for the declarative style. If I need a two-column layout on my slide, I just type it in and it works. If I need to reveal parts of the slide step-by-step, I just type in \pause and it works. Also, I rarely need to adjust the font sizes etc.: the defaults are just sensible, if not outright beautiful. And, also, custom themes and goodies like the progress indicators are great (see the Singapore theme). * I like Impress for the fact that I have a fine grained control over a layout, should I need a something that goes beyond a columns/rows layout. Also, I can import and resize graphics without pain (in LaTeX it takes time). Also, I have more choice of animations, but adding them is very time consuming. Finally, I don't need to rebuild the slides after the tiniest change as with LaTeX. The HTML/SVG/CSS/JS seemed to have a potential to offer the best of both worlds, but the scaling problem (as described above) was throwing me back. In the process I've written down a list of features for my dream presentation tool: * beautiful typography * flexible layout: I should be able to specify the layout declaratively (e.g. two columns and a header, or a header, block of text and a table) with the tool figuring out the rest (font sizes, margins, etc) or fine-tune it manually where I can specify the font sizes and positions of every element * themes and widgets (progress indicators, timers, slide numbers etc) * should be easy to embed pictures and diagrams with scriptable animations (SVG+JS seems to be ideal for it, and I've used Inkscape for a while). The animations should be: rotation, translation, resizing, showing/hiding, change of color and zooming (the latter one being the only thing that I'm missing in both LaTeX and PowerPoint/Impress). * being able to edit the presentation on the fly. I don't want to rebuild the slides every time I fix a typo.