Will the Web Browser Replace Powerpoint?

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Why Does Presentation Software Exist?

There are two basic reasons to use presentation software: as an authoring environment and as a presentation environment.

When preparing a presentation, a tool like Powerpoint can be invaluable. It offers distinct modes of editing:

• an Outline view, in which you can organize your main points, editing and inserting new points and subpoints iteratively. Bullet points appropriate to each sublevel are inserted automatically; you merely hit the Tab key to indent one level as appropriate.
• a Slide view, in which you can insert text and external graphics (such as captured screen shots, photographs, diagrams, etc) and a rather complete drawing module
• a Slide Sorter view, in which you can move slides up or down in the presentation. You can also use the Slide Sorter to grab a handful of slides from one presentation for re-use in a new talk.

When I prepare Powerpoint presentations, I must worry about how things will look on screen. But Powerpoint is engineered towards the relatively narrow goal of putting slides together, and it has a built-in understanding of slide formats. The drawing tool is reasonably powerful. Handling of placed graphics has improved in Powerpoint '97. I can worry about content in the Outline view, and can usually make each slide look the way I want without too much hassle in Slide view.

By contrast, the HTML work that I do, such as this column, is the least productive. I haven't met an authoring tool yet that doesn't screw up the look of sites that have a carefully designed look and layout. And if I'm building a Web presentation for live delivery, look and layout are important.