Microsoft PowerPoint
The application allows users to save their documents in many different image formats. Most of these can easily be inserted into a blog or Web page. Several of the formats will support the automatic and dynamic attributes of a slide presentation.
It gives you the option of whether you want the selected slide to be saved or if you want the entire presentation to be saved.
To convert a single slide:
- Click the desired slide in the presentation.
- Click the File ribbon.
- Click the Save As item in the left column.
- In the drop-down menu, click the desired image format. There are many more formats in the list than are listed here:
- GIF: Graphics Interchange Format
- JPEG: Joint Picture Experts Group
- PNG: Portable Network Graphic
- TIFF: Tagged Image File Format
- BMP: Windows Bitmap
- WMF: Windows Metafile
- EMF: Enhanced Metafile
- Click the Save button after selecting the format.
- In the dialog that appears, click the Just This One button.
The image will be saved in the same folder that the presentation is located.
If you choose the entire presentation, PowerPoint creates a folder and stores each slide as an image in the folder.
Follow the same steps for saving a single slide. However, on step 6, click All Slides. A second dialog appears stating that the images for the slides are stored in a separate folder, that is located in the same folder as the one where the presentation is stored.
These images can be uploaded to a Website using a content management system, like WordPress, and then a slide show can be recreated with a slideshow plugin for the CMS.
However, if you want to simply upload the presentation to a server and show it through a Web browser without a CMS, you would still need to create HTML documentation and code in another language to play the slideshow automatically through the browser.
This would be time consuming and take you beyond the scope of PowerPoint. The next section shows that Impress is better for this.
LibreOffice Impress
The open-source application also allows for the slides to be exported as images. If it is exported as HTML, it creates a tag with the refresh meta tag.
Slides and presentations can be exported as HTML and XHTML documents and various image formats. Here is how to export them:
- Click the File menu.
- Click the Export item.
- In the dialog, choose a format in the File type drop-down menu.
- Choose a location to save the slides or presentation.
HTML
LibreOffice Impress has two Web types to save a presentation as: HTML and XHTML.
XHTML will save the contents of the selected slide only. It will not include themes or layouts. It will simply be the text and images that were included in the slide. Formatting to text, such as making it bold will be included.
The other choice, HTML, launches a wizard that creates a folder of images and HTML documents. The documents have code that redirects to each image. There are HTML documents and images for each slide.
The wizard allows you to choose what format the images are: PNG, GIF, or JPEG. It allows you to choose the publication type and set up a title page. The pages of HTML code and the images for the slides will be stored in a folder that Impress allows you to create.
- Select HTML Document from the drop-down list in the Export dialog.
- Click the Save button.
- Follow the steps in the HTML Export dialog.
The wizard is good for creating documents of the presentation that can be uploaded to a server through an FTP client and shown through a Web browser. It is not as effective when the slideshow needs to be inserted in a content management system, like WordPress, so it can be integrated with a blog or Web page.
Images
Impress also can export presentations to various image formats. Unlike PowerPoint and the HTML wizard, it only exports one slide at a time into the desired format.
This could be beneficial if you only wanted one slide to be exported at a time. However, it takes more work and it is more time consuming if you want every slide to be saved in a certain image format.
The image formats are as follows:
- BMP: Windows Bitmap
- EMF: Enhanced Metafile
- EPS: Encapsulated PostScript
- GIF: Graphics Interchange Format
- JPEG: Joint Picture Experts Group
- PNG: Portable Network Graphic
- SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics
- TIFF: Tagged Image File Format
- WMF: Windows Metafile
Conclusion
PowerPoint and Impress have several image formats to convert images to. Impress has nine; PowerPoint has seven. One of the additional formats Impress has is SVG, a vector-based format that allows text and some graphics to remain clear, regardless of how the image is resized.
This does not give Impress the advantage in this area, however. The open-source presentation application will only export one slide at a time to an image format. PowerPoint gives you the option to export one slide at a time or the entire presentation. This means that an entire presentation is ready to be uploaded to a Website after a few clicks. With Impress, you will have to perform the export process over and over again until all the slides are in the desired format.
Impress has an export choice that allows for an entire presentation to be exported at the same time. It is the HTML item in the drop-down menu in the Export dialog. This launches a HTML Export wizard, where you can choose several different options, and there are three different image formats that the slides can be exported to.
Many users still users simply want to upload the presentation to a server and give the presentation through a Web browser. Impress is better than PowerPoint for this because the wizard guides you through setting up the Website before it is uploaded.
Others want to integrate the presentation into a Web page or blog and use a CMS, like WordPress, and use the slideshow capabilities of the CMS. PowerPoint is better at setting up the presentation for this because it can export all the slides of the presentation at the same time, and it creates a separate folder for it.
Both applications have their advantages when it comes to creating presentations for Websites. Impress can open PowerPoint presentations and it will look similar to how it looks in PowerPoint. This means that you can use both as tools. Choose the one that best meets your needs.
