Back to Blog
![]() ![]() ![]() In addition to adjustable soft drop shadows and object transparency, first introduced in Office 2004, PowerPoint 2008 supports reflections. PowerPoint 2008 narrows the gap by adopting more of the graphics capabilities built into OS X. It’s always been easy to spot Keynote slideshows-even if they don’t use Apple themes, presentations crafted with Keynote often have a distinctive look. And, in contrast with the Toolbox, you can open multiple instances of Keynote’s Inspector to work with different object attributes at the same time. ![]() In comparison, Keynote’s Inspector windows encompass a narrower range of functions but have a more consistent user interface, so they’re easier to deal with. In addition, many Toolbox buttons-picture formatting and animation effects, for example-open separate dialog boxes with their own varied interfaces and quirks. The remaining palettes let you access PowerPoint’s Scrapbook and Compatibility Report, which were housed separately in PowerPoint 2004’s Toolbox.īut Microsoft’s attempt to pack so many different commands into a relatively compact window results in an ever-changing interface, and the dynamic resizing that occurs as you switch between tabs is sometimes jarring. Animation controls get their own Toolbox palette, as do Reference Tools, which let you look up dictionary definitions, thesaurus entries, translations, and more. PowerPoint 2008’s clip art library includes the cheesy drawings that are a staple of bad presentations everywhere, but thankfully adds more than 100 photographs with transparent backgrounds. In addition to a Formatting palette with sections that change to let you adjust the attributes of the currently selected object, the Toolbox sports a separate Object palette that lets you insert shapes, symbols, clip art, or pictures onto a slide. In PowerPoint 2008, the revamped Toolbox continues along the same path by further centralizing functions and grouping them more logically. PowerPoint 2004’s Formatting Palette simplified PowerPoint’s interface by consolidating many commands in one accessible location. (As in PowerPoint, you can apply themes to change the look of an entire presentation in one step.) Although PowerPoint 2008’s model provides considerable flexibility, it’s not as straightforward as Keynote’s approach, and will probably confuse novices and experienced users alike. You can have as many masters as you wish, each with its own background and arrangement of text, graphics elements, and placeholders. Keynote, by contrast, doesn’t separate masters and layouts. Themes, on the other hand, let you specify the background and attributes of all the placeholders on any subset of slides, and provide a way to maintain design consistency. Set the title text on the master slide to Arial yellow bold, say, and the corresponding text on all the individual slide layouts changes too. Instead of separate title and slide masters, PowerPoint 2008 supports a single master slide that determines the appearance of background elements and placeholders on all the slide layouts. ![]() Nowhere is the difference in design philosophy between PowerPoint and Keynote more apparent than in each program’s implementation of themes, master slides, and layouts. You can also customize any of the toolbars to suit your workflow by dragging commands into or out of them. When docked, the toolbars are integrated into the main window, resulting in a much cleaner appearance than in PowerPoint 2004. The standard toolbar is now built in, and you can opt to display all the toolbars docked or undocked- except the Drawing toolbar, which cannot be docked. Many changes to PowerPoint’s user interface are recognizable instantly. While it’s still not Keynote’s equal, PowerPoint is sometimes a better practical choice. Sporting an improved interface and beefed-up graphics capabilities, PowerPoint 2008 catches up to Keynote in a few areas and even exceeds it in some. Although the initial release lagged in a few critical respects, three subsequent updates addressed most of Keynote’s shortcomings and established it as the clear presentation leader for the Mac. But Mac presenters have had an alternative since January of 2003, when Apple unveiled Few products enjoy the market dominance that PowerPoint for Windows does-for most of the world, the words “PowerPoint” and “presentation” are interchangeable. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |