Are there other good presentation tools out there?

Question

Does anyone know of any good presentation tools out there other than PowerPoint?

Answer 1

1. Confidence.
2. Humility.
3. A shot of good whiskey.
4. A sense of humor.

Answer 2

Being a programmer, and one that develops web applications all the time, I like the idea of reusing the knowledge I have to write texts and presentations. I use Eric Meyer's S5, licensed as public domain. It uses a simple HTML and CSS format and uses some clever JavaScript to change pages, add some effects, etc. To show a presentation, just open it in a decent browser and hit F11 (to show it in full screen). It provides some themes that you can easily tweak to your tastes using CSS.

Answer 3

Have a look at prezi, its web based and quite different from the usual presentations out there.

Answer 4

OpenOffice.org has a presentation/slideshow tool and I believe Google Docs now supports presentations (but I have not used this tool), but is there something in particular you are looking for?

Answer 5

You can create a presentation in HTML with S5

Answer 6

I've seen people create some stunning presentations with Apple's Keynote.

Answer 7

I would second Sam Hasler's recommendation for S5, and also suggest that you create a pdf from your presentation if you use something like power point or open office, to improve the portability of your presentation. I don't know why you are looking for PPT alternatives; if portability is a concern, open source purity is a concern, or just pure curiosity.

Also, depending on the format and topic of your presentation, making a video of screen movements might be a good idea. You can record yourself doing something, and use it to show your audience.

Answer 8

Apple's Keynote is gorgeous. Follow the link for their spiel, which is in this case very well justified, IMHO.

The story is that Steve Jobs commissioned its creation for his own use, and he is a very, very demanding customer as far as presentation software is concerned.

Answer 9

I've seen suggestions to use SVG as a presentation tool, but I have not tried it myself:

"Way Beyond Powerpoint: XML-driven SVG for Presentations" http://www.idealliance.org/proceedings/xml04/papers/156/piez-xml2004-ideadb.html

It looks like there is a tool for svg presentations, but I haven't actually found the tool, only this paper talking about it (it's probably just a research prototype.)

http://www.svgopen.org/2004/papers/SVGSlidePresentationEditor/

Answer 10

Zoho Show is an FREE online presentation program allows users to create presentations from scratch or (as is often the case) import from their library of Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps) or OpenOffice (.odp, .sxi) presentations.

280 Slides is a notable FREE online replacement for desktop presentation apps.With it, you can create a presentation, theme it, add graphics and video, and then present it, share it via Slideshare, or download it as a PowerPoint or PDF file.

PPT2Flash lets non-technical users create high-impact Flash presentations and eLearning courses from PowerPoint with rich media, quizzes and simulations. PPT2Flash content runs on any Web server, any LMS. For

Answer 11

LaTeX with beamer gives by far the best results of anything I've tried.

Answer 12

The best web-based presentation software I've come across is 280 Slides. If you're familiar with Keynote you should be right at home.

Answer 13

Besides presentation tool like PowerPoint, there is another tool to record the computer screen activity for making software or system demonstrations. We can call it screen recorder or screen recording software. It is nice for showing how to get the technical task done. There is a good one DemoCreator available.