CIDM Information Management News February 2005: Presentations, I Would Like You to Meet Single Source

Presentations, I Would Like You to Meet Single Source

Paul Trotter
AuthorIT Software

We have all been there; it's the day before a big presentation. You vaguely remember some slides you created months earlier that would be perfect. However, after drudging through a handful of obscurely named PowerPoint files you begin to lose hope. You copy and paste some of the material you find, then delete it as you find newer content in even more obscurely named files. Finding yourself in a formatting nightmare, you start pulling your hair out as you change fonts, resize text, and mutter to yourself as your bullets decide to dance all over the page for reasons you don't even pretend to comprehend.

Why not store all your slides in one place? Reuse them freely across multiple presentations and watch updates cascade across every slide. Even better, why not store all content in one place and allow it to be reused in any output?

Users of AuthorIT Enterprise can now extend their list of single source outputs with Presentations. AuthorIT can output feature packed slideshows with slide transitions, bullet by bullet progression, fully functional Flash objects, and that's just the beginning.

In contrast to the exercise in hair-pulling mentioned above, you've been compiling a press release using AuthorIT's single source content management environment. Dragging and dropping the content you need and then outputting it to your web site and to print. You are confident the content is correct and the output is perfect. All this in record time without any frustration. Now the same can apply to your presentations.

Dragging and Dropping

Create sophisticated presentations by simply dragging and dropping existing content. By leveraging the AuthorIT single source architecture through your presentations, you can be confident those slides are up to date and correct when you deliver your presentation, even if they were created months ago.

Using AuthorIT's object oriented approach, presentations can be quickly chopped and changed to suit any requirements. Absolutely no duplication is required. No copying and pasting or tricky conversion, simply find the content you need and drag and drop.

Free your viewers. AuthorIT Presentations remove the need for an expensive proprietary program at the viewers' end. Stream the presentations online without any external software, send presentations to potential clients without worrying if they can open them, and give your audience the option to view your presentations on any platform they wish.

Features of AuthorIT Presentations:

Creates and maintains data as single source content in AuthorIT
Publishes in W3C compliant HTML/XHTML and print formats
Provides full table of contents and navigation controls
Supports keyboard navigation, with timed and continuous looping
Slide transition effects (Internet Explorer only)
Slides can appear complete, one element at a time, or in groups
Viewable in a web browser, so it supports anything you can display in a browser, including videos and flash

What about the advantages?

Reuse, Reuse, Reuse

reuse slides across presentations
reuse individual points across slides
reuse graphical elements
reuse and share content with other documents

Enforce branding and ensure a consistent look and feel
Control access and track changes on individual slides
Quickly assemble new presentations from existing slides
Easily translate presentations into multiple languages
Deliver or view with a web browser on any platform
View it locally or on the web, no plugins required

Check it out at www.authorit.com