Curious Office

I have been grinding on a new start-up idea lately and I’ve begun to realize something about presentations. As most people know, Powerpoint has long been the preferred “new business presentation medium” for investors. But there are a lot of things wrong with Powerpoint that I think make it a less than ideal solution. For my new project, I’m using an HTML page that effectively looks like Powerpoint (e.g. big fonts, “slide” style design etc.) I edit all my pages in Dreamweaver CS3 but anyone can make a basic presentation using Notepad or something similar.

The benefits of doing it this way are as follows:

1. You don’t have to email a HUGE attachment and clog peoples email boxes or ask them to download a big .zip file from a server to get the Powerpoint presentation. HTML is very light.
2. With an HTML slideshow sitting on a server, you can do minor updates as you think of them without having to email blast everyone with new versions or ask them to “re-download” a big zip file. They return to your site - the updates are just there.
3. You can embed graphics without them getting distorted as Powerpoint does to ALL graphics. This is a KEY point.
4. Powerpoint slides don’t scroll. That forces you to break single concepts across more than one slide (with really small font) instead of keeping one key message on a single scrolling page.
5. Using HTML let’s have you a very granular “code level” view of your presentation to include fonts, spacing etc. Powerpoint gets fussy when you try to figure out why it is formatting things certain ways.
6. You can do “global updates” across your entire presentation easier in HTML. For example, suppose you want to add a “Click Here to Print” button at the bottom right of each slide. It’s easy in HTML but with Powerpoint you would probably have to add that to the footer to do it and that may not be what you want.
7. You can control distribution of the presentation easier.
8. You can add LARGE graphics to a page without it getting “smashed”. If your presentation benefits from screen shots of an application idea this is absolutely necessary.
9. You can control the layout of the whole experience. For example, do you want it to be in a fixed width container? A fluid container? To the right of the screen? Left of the screen?

10) It is easier to add a menu system for navigation to jump from slide to slide