Google Presentations Finally Arrives!
Oh, god, they finally did it.
Smart readers will note that I’ve been calling Google Docs & Spreadsheets just “Google Docs” for a while, since it became obvious that a name that mentions everything in the suite would probably be shortened to Docs eventually anyway. Google’s done exactly that, so Google Office is going to be called henceforth Google Docs, as it should be. Google also made the smart move of not giving it an awful name like “Presently”.
Go to docs.google.com and click New, and you’ll see a new entry for Presentation. Here’s the basic interface:
You can create new slides, duplicate slide, insert images and text, change themes, re-order slides, share your presentation, publish your presentation to the web, and run a slideshow.
Presentation comes with 15 themes (including “Blank”, natch) you can set for your slide backgrounds. There is no way to add one of your own, though you could probably fake it with an image.
When you create a new slide, you can choose from five pre-set layouts (including Blank) to pre-populate it.
You can right-click on items to delete them or re-order them.
When playing a presentation, you are given an interface with a chat room (which also shows you how is watching the presentation online), a URL to share it, and the option to go full-screen with the F11 button. The chat window is present even in full-screen mode, though you can click a divider to hide it. There is no option to chat in a seperate browser windows. Standard keys will advance and rewind through the presentation (space, backspace, enter, left mouse click).
Dissapointingly, there is no option to embed the presentation in a webpage. Go here to view my presentation.
So, how does it look? It’s pretty basic. Put things here, move around, set a background, publish. The chat room is nice, and the fact that collaboration is as easy as it with the other Google Docs products is good, too. Otherwise, you won’t be creating anything spectacular with this, but it adds another feature for Google, and it doesn’t suck. PowerPoint killer? Not anytime soon.
UPDATE: Another thing: You can import PowerPoint files (but not PowerPoint 2007 files) into Presentations, and you can output your Presentations as a zipped HTML.
The ZIP file contains a single webpage, plus folders with JavaScript and the images. The Presentation can then run locally, on a single page (so it never has to load after the first time) on any computer with a browser that supports JavaScript. You can even run them on an iPhone! Keyboard shortcuts work, and it looks good.
Very well implemented.
Another thing: Chats in the chat frame are saved in your Gmail account. Nice, nice, nice!
Not so nice: Everyone’s email address is revealed.
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There’s a cool lil’ tool called authorPoint lite, which imports presentations and batch uploads to a service called authorSTREAM. This setup works perfect for sharing presentations.
I also noticed that authorSTREAM lets you upload presentations as private. I particularly like the fact that authorStream’s emebedded presentations on external sites also have a full screen option, which no other service has, and it retains effects nicely, which other services don’t do.
Comment by ShowLion | September 19, 2007
I really wished you were reading the news like I was. I really think some google guy is reading your blog and spotted your presentation deadline, because only recently a bunch of blogs and newspapers were reporting that google presentation was almost done. When I read that, I remembered the deadline countdown you set up.
Funny, I thought you were an idiot to be holding this commitment up against google. everything in google is a distant promise, so if they were late in this regard, i wouldn’t be saying “surprise.”
Comment by anas hashmi | September 20, 2007