Using the Presenter Display

The Presenter Display allows you to view your presentation and display your Speaker Notes using an interface that only you see. It gives you a control panel that you see on your notebook's screen, while the audience sees the regular slideshow on the projector. This mode is only available when you are using multiple monitors . This means that iBooks, iMacs, and eMacs cannot use the Presenter Display, because they can only use mirrored mode.

In the Presenter Display, you get large views of the current and next slides or slide builds, your Speaker Notes, a clock, and best of all, an on-screen timer that tells you either the elapsed time of your presentation or a countdown of the time remaining, depending on how you prefer to work ( Figure 12.12 ). This timer is a great tool to help you stay on track; by knowing how long you have been talking, you can speed up or slow down to keep within your allotted speaking time.

Figure 12.12. The Presenter Display gives you a view of your presentation that the audience doesn't see.

Before you get into your presentation, you should decide which of the Presenter Display options you want to use.

Practice Mode

The new Presenter Display in Keynote 2 gives you a great new view while you're giving a talk, but there's no preview in Presenter mode, as there is in PowerPoint's similar feature, so you usually need an external monitor to practice your presentation. But you can often trick Keynote into letting you practice in front of the Presenter Display. This technique works on many PowerBooks, but not all, due to the vagaries of the video hardware installed in your particular model of laptop. But you should try it and see. Follow these steps:

1.	Plug the video dongle you use to hook up a projector into your laptop, then open Displays in System Preferences and uncheck "Mirror Displays" on the Arrangement tab.
2.	Launch Keynote, and choose Keynote > Preferences.
3.	On the Slideshow tab, click "Present on secondary display," and on the Presenter Display tab, click "Use alternate display to view presenter information." Then close the Preferences window. When you play your presentation, you'll see the Presenter Display on your laptop screen.

To choose Presenter Display options

1.	Choose Keynote > Preferences, then click the Presenter Display tab. The Presenter Display Preferences window opens ( Figure 12.13 ). Figure 12.13. Choose which items you want to use in the Presenter Display.
2.	Check the items you want to appear in the Presenter Display.
3.	(Optional) To arrange the items in the Presenter Display, click the Edit Presenter Layout button. A mockup of the Presenter Display appears. You can resize items and move them on the screen to set them up as you like. You can also turn items on and off here using the Presenter Display dialog ( Figure 12.14 ). When you are done arranging the Presenter Display items, click Done to close the Presenter Display mockup and return to the Keynote Preferences dialog. Figure 12.14. Set the position and size of the Presenter Display items, then click Done.

To use the Presenter Display

When you run the presentation, the Presenter Display will appear on your laptop's screen. You can use the following keyboard commands to affect items in the Presenter Display:

• Type U to scroll your Speaker Notes up.
  
  
• Type D to scroll your Speaker Notes down.
  
  
• Type R to reset the on-screen timer.
  
  
• Type F to freeze the presentation and stop the timer. Press any key to resume the show.
  
  

It's important to understand that when using the Presenter Display, the Current Slide window always shows you what the audience is seeing on the projector, and the Next window shows what will happen next. If you have slide builds in your presentation, you'll need to get used to the fact that the Next window shows you the result of the next build , not always the next slide.