| PowerPoint includes a number of ways to animate your slides. You can animate the transition from one slide to another or animate how objects and text appear on a slide. You can also customize these basic animations in a variety of ways. You can have action buttons or other objects perform a specific action in your presentation, such as opening a Web page on the Internet. Like most of PowerPoint's capabilities, animation can be either very simple or detailed and complex. It all depends on how creative and sophisticated you want to make your presentation. Animation can definitely enliven any presentation, but as with any special effect, be careful not to overdo. Too much animation can actually detract from your presentation. Animation also increases a file's size.  To learn more about animation and visual design, see Chapter 25, "The Media ”Designing Visual Support," p. 535 .
Depending on what you want to animate (slide, text, drawing object, chart, media clip, and so forth) and what kind of animation you want to use (a direction or an action), you have several ways to create an animation effect in PowerPoint. Your basic choices include the following: -
Slide transitions ” Let you determine how to change from one slide to the next in your presentation. By default, when you move from one slide to another, the next slide immediately appears. With animation, you can make the old slide fade away to reveal the new slide or make the new slide move down from the top of the screen to cover the old slide. -
Animation schemes ” Let you animate PowerPoint objects, such as text or drawing objects, using directional effects similar to slide transitions. For example, you can use an animation scheme to dissolve or wipe title text into your presentation. -
Custom animation ” Lets you set more sophisticated animation options, such as the order and timing of multiple animation objects in one slide. You can also use custom animation on charts and media clips such as sound and movie files. -
Action settings ” Let you attach an action to a PowerPoint object. For example, you can open a Web page, go to another slide, or start an external program by clicking the mouse on ”or even by just passing the mouse pointer over ”the object. An action setting differs from the previous kinds of animation in that it performs an action rather than defines how to introduce an object or slide. -
Action buttons ” Let you attach an action to a specific button. An action button is a predefined object that includes an action setting. You can attach an action setting to an object you create, or you can use an action button instead.  |
