Instant Web Presentations


Here's something you are going to find incredibly useful. Impress lets you export your existing presentation to HTML format. The beauty of this is that you can take your presentation and make it available to anyone with a Web browser. Best of all, the export functionality takes care of all the details associated with creating a Web site, including the handling of links and forward and back buttons.

To create an instant Web presentation in OpenOffice, here is what you do. Make sure that your current Impress presentation is open and that your work is saved. Click File on the menu bar and select Export. The Export dialog, looking very much like the standard GNOME file selector, appears. Make sure you select HTML Document from the File type drop-down list. Because all the generated pages appear in the directory you choose, it might make sense to create an empty directory, into which to save your files before entering a filename. That filename, by the way, is the HTML title page, normally called index.html. If you would like a different name, choose it here, minus the .html extension (for example, Linux_Intro), and click Save. A new window appears. This is the HTML Export dialog (see Figure 15-10).

Figure 15-10. The HTML export dialog on first run.


If this is your first HTML export, you only have one option on the first screen, and that is to create a new design. Click Next and you are presented with a few additional choices (see Figure 15-11).

Figure 15-11. It is time to choose the format of your HTML presentation.


You are given the choice of several publication types. The default choice (and probably a very good one) is Standard HTML Format. You can also decide to create an HTML publication with frames, if you prefer. If you want to be totally in control of what your audience sees, you can also elect to create an automatic slide show (using HTML refresh times of whatever you choose) or a WebCast. When you have made your choice, click Next.

On the next window, you must decide the resolution of the images created for your Web publication (see Figure 15-12). The default is to use JPG images at 75 percent compression. You can elect to set this all the way up to 100 percent for the best quality possible, but be aware that the higher the quality, the larger the images and the slower the download time. If this presentation is meant to be viewed on your personal office network, it probably doesn't matter. Notice as well that you can choose to use the PNG graphic format instead of JPG.

Figure 15-12. Select your image quality and monitor resolution. In this example, I've chosen to use PNG images instead of JPG.


Tip

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless, high-quality, and patent-free replacement for the GIF file format of old.


You are also asked to choose the monitor resolution. This is an excellent question that is probably worth more than a few seconds of configuration. At some point in your history of surfing, you have come across a Web site where the Web page is larger than your browser window. To view the page, you need to move your horizontal slide bar back and forth just to read the text. Although we are used to scrolling up and down to read text, left to right scrolling is somewhat more annoying. If you want to be as inclusive as possible for your audience, use 640x480. That may be going overboard though. Most personal computer monitors these days will handle 800x600 without any problem and many people run 1024x768 displays. Is there a right answer? Probably not. Consider your target audience, make your decision based on those considerations, and then click Next.

One last thing before we move on. Notice the Effects check box. I'm not a big fan of Web pages that play sounds when I do things. You can choose to export sounds whenever slides advance. The best way to decide what you like is to try both. It's all for fun, anyhow.

On the next window that appears, fill in title page information for the Web presentation. This is the author's name (you), your email address, and a link back to your own Web site, if you want. Click Next, and you then have the opportunity to decide on the graphics you want to use for the forward and back buttons. If you don't want to use graphical buttons, you don't have to. In fact, the default is to use Text Only; so to use a particular button style, make sure you uncheck the check box (see Figure 15-13), select your button style, and click Next.

Figure 15-13. Pick a button style, any button style.


We are almost there. The final window lets you decide on the color scheme for the presentation. The default is simply to use the colors from the original Impress publication, but you can override this, as well as the color for hyperlinks and the Web page background. Make your choices and click Create. One last window appears, asking you to name the HTML design. This is a free-form text field. Enter a brief description, and click Save.

The process of exporting your presentation may take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on the speed of your machine and the complexity of your presentation. To view the presentation, open your browser and point to the title page. That is all there is to it.

How About a Little Flash? Shocking!

Before we wrap up, let's revisit that Export dialog one more time. Click File from the menu and select Export. When the Export dialog appears, have another look at the File format selection box, just below the File Name field. The default is to export to an HTML document, but there are other options here. For one, we have a PDF export, the one button export (beside the printer icon on the standard bar) is common to Impress as well.

Notice as well that you have a Macromedia Flash export capability. Isn't that interesting? Enter a filename for your presentation (no need to add the .swf extension). With a single click of the Export button, your presentation is saved to Macromedia's Flash format. Now, your presentation is viewable from any browser with a Macromedia Flash or Shockwave plugin. The advantage of this over the HTML export is that all your animated slide transitions are preserved. Visitors to your site can view the presentation as it was intended.




Moving to Ubuntu Linux
Moving to Ubuntu Linux
ISBN: 032142722X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 201

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