Will the Web Browser Replace Powerpoint?

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Use Powerpoint as Authoring Tool and Web Browser for Playback

So Powerpoint is an excellent authoring tool. It's also an excellent playback tool, except for the version problems and the viewer download time.

Maybe there's a middle ground here. Powerpoint 97 already offers a nice "Save as HTML" feature, which puts out your slides in HTML format, including nice navigation bars. This is almost good enough to use for presentations. The only problem is there is no full-screen viewing mode, which is what you'd really want for a slide show.

But surely it'd be possible to build a simple ActiveX control that'd allow full screen viewing of a Powerpoint-saved-as-HTML file. We'd have the best of both worlds: use Powerpoint as your authoring tool, where it really excels. Use the Web browser as the playback tool. Web browsers are more likely to be ubiquitous than the Powerpoint Viewer. Furthermore, in the most common case, Powerpoint-as-HTML isn't going to have version problems.

Another advantage of Powerpoint-as-HTML is that integration of external media is more likely to work in a Web browser than in Powerpoint. Although Microsoft has added media playing capability to recent versions, Web browsers are more likely to have built-in understanding of numerous formats such as RealVideo. And of course hyperlinks to external pages work natively from a Web browser, should you want to deviate from your canned linear presentation and "go live" for part of your talk.

A final advantage is you can archive your entire presentation on your Web site, and it becomes available to anyone on the Web. Your content will also be indexed by search engines. By contrast, if you put your presentation up in Powerpoint format, very few people will casually download it.

Powerpoint-as-HTML may not have all the whiz-bang features, though. Powerpoint "animations" -- in which you have your bullet points fly onto the screen -- may be hard to simulate in the HTML world. I, for one, find these animations and transition effects to be a rather useless affectation. Maybe there's a way with ActiveX or Java to bring those effects into the Powerpoint-as-HTML world.

I think it's time for presentation packages to turn into authoring tools, with playback functions implemented fully in Web browsers.