[Roy]

Does anyone yet know what the options will be for saving Powerpoint slides to the web? Will it be improved? Any chance of Flash output? Better integration of audio?

There are other 'features' I'd like, especially a version of Word that isn't the ONLY application that still constantly crashes on OS X -- I have to trash preferences, font cache, and the Normal template to get it to work. But, as a teacher, Powerpoint is the single overriding need, and especially it's ability to make clean, fast webpages.

Of course, if Keynote were to output HTML (or if I knew how to quickly manipulate the XML) then goodbye Office -- take note Apple!

Finally, while I'm on the subject, I watched Microsoft's teaser demos that are out. DId any one else's skin crawl when the far too cheerful presenter mention "Smart buttons"? Why does Microsoft insist that all users are basically stupid and have to learn to adapt to the software rather than the other way round? (That's rhetorical of course! Answer: catering to the average Windows user)

[gorickey]

"Smart Buttons" will be nice in Excel I believe...depending on how well it figures out errors in formulas...

[Roy]

Originally posted by gorickey:
"Smart Buttons" will be nice in Excel I believe...depending on how well it figures out errors in formulas...

I admit I'm being deliberately pessimistic here, but I think we have to see. Nothing annoys me more than Microsoft apps popping up with all kinds of meaningless advice, automatic completions, auto-formating, and other 'smart' things that it thinks I don't know. OK, so occasionally, perhaps on the 100th time this happens, I might actually learn something new, but by then I'm fed up with it. Probably just me, but it's interesting that other apps don't go quite this far -- not even the other 'biggies' like Macromedia or Adobe.

Ever got into a loop where you have what you want in the Excel cell, but the software assumes it must be a formula so it won't let you do anything else until you delete it and start again?!

Also, it's kinda fun to poke fun at Microsoft. They have some good ideas, but do they ever get it completely right? If you want me to be serious, I'll be happy if Office 2004 is completely stable & reasonably quick ... oh, and exports Powerpoint to flash of course!

[rytc]

Originally posted by Roy:
There are other 'features' I'd like, especially a version of Word that isn't the ONLY application that still constantly crashes on OS X -- I have to trash preferences, font cache, and the Normal template to get it to work.

I'd have to second that, especially as I am having to write my thesis at the moment and anm getting sick of the daily (hourly) force-quits that Word requires to keep it going. However, the Windows XP version isn't much better. I've had dozens of sudden quit outs on me writing a 5 page essay.....
Basically word needs alot of bloat cut out, I'd be happy with lite version that had minimal features but still had 100% compatibility with winword, which is the only reason I really have to use word anyway.

[mrmister]

"Basically word needs alot of bloat cut out, I'd be happy with lite version that had minimal features but still had 100% compatibility with winword, which is the only reason I really have to use word anyway."

If that's all you need, I'd recommend TextEdit.

[Synotic]

Originally posted by Roy:
Does anyone yet know what the options will be for saving Powerpoint slides to the web? Will it be improved? Any chance of Flash output? Better integration of audio?

There are other 'features' I'd like, especially a version of Word that isn't the ONLY application that still constantly crashes on OS X -- I have to trash preferences, font cache, and the Normal template to get it to work. But, as a teacher, Powerpoint is the single overriding need, and especially it's ability to make clean, fast webpages.

Of course, if Keynote were to output HTML (or if I knew how to quickly manipulate the XML) then goodbye Office -- take note Apple!

Finally, while I'm on the subject, I watched Microsoft's teaser demos that are out. DId any one else's skin crawl when the far too cheerful presenter mention "Smart buttons"? Why does Microsoft insist that all users are basically stupid and have to learn to adapt to the software rather than the other way round? (That's rhetorical of course! Answer: catering to the average Windows user)

Is there any reason you need to have your presentations represented as websites? I'd be wary of any feature claiming to reliably represent your presentations as either flash or html.

[-Q-]

Originally posted by Roy:
Also, it's kinda fun to poke fun at Microsoft. They have some good ideas, but do they ever get it completely right? If you want me to be serious, I'll be happy if Office 2004 is completely stable & reasonably quick ... oh, and exports Powerpoint to flash of course!

Well, in answer to the first, I haven't had the 'preview' crash on me yet. I've come across the occasional bug, but no major crash.

As for Flash, no export:



But why would you want to do that? Flash is 10x more powerful and flexible than PowerPoint.

[Roy]

Need for Powerpoint generated websites
Yes, definitely! For the past 12 months I've been pioneering e-learning at my school, and students simply don't have the computer wherewithall to handle anything above point-and-click webpages. Powerpoint actually does a pretty good job -- I get Quicktime embeds no problem for example -- but the pages look really, really old and shabby, like webpages used to be in the dark ages of 1999 or before. There's also some big problems getting graphics to render nicely -- Powerpoint does a horrible job with graphics.

If there's any other way to do this, I'd love to know. I *don't* want to remake all my slides (we actually spent about 10k on an e-learning suite that seemed great at the time, but then we found that the only way to get existing Powerpoint presentations up there was to up-load 1 slide at a time!) While I'd love to use Breeze, Macromedia's pricing is way out of our reach.

Word alternatives
Yes, true, Think Office is pretty good, although not as polished. I suffer from the problem of too many colleagues ONLY using Word and needing to quickly exchange files. Big pain.

[Roy]

But why would you want to do that? Flash is 10x more powerful and flexible than PowerPoint. [/B]

Yes! As a PS to my last post, do you know anyway to get from Powerpoint slides (or at least the outlines) to Flash? I've only got about 2,000 slides to convert so I'm reluctant to start all over again. If Keynote did HTML that would be the way I'd go.

[MartiNZ]

Originally posted by Roy:
I admit I'm being deliberately pessimistic here, but I think we have to see. Nothing annoys me more than Microsoft apps popping up with all kinds of meaningless advice, automatic completions, auto-formating, and other 'smart' things that it thinks I don't know. OK, so occasionally, perhaps on the 100th time this happens, I might actually learn something new, but by then I'm fed up with it. Probably just me, but it's interesting that other apps don't go quite this far -- not even the other 'biggies' like Macromedia or Adobe.

Ever got into a loop where you have what you want in the Excel cell, but the software assumes it must be a formula so it won't let you do anything else until you delete it and start again?!

I've got to say that I'm looking forward to the smart buttons - this seems to be exactly the same as what Excel XP has on Windows, and it is one thing that I find actually improved over Excel 2000 there. I hate the task pane and the paste options buttons (hopefully we're not getting those!) but the way it works with errors in formulae, and more importantly, the formatting of numbers, saves a lot of trouble.

In Excel v.X / Excel 2000, as far as I know, the only way to get numbers to actually work as numbers if they come in as text is to copy and paste to TextEdit and copy and paste back. With smart buttons, Excel just tells you that the numbers are not being treated as numbers and offers to fix it - very useful for saving time, and for anyone who doesn't realise why numbers aren't sorting correctly! In fact, if it's like XP, it will even ask if you want to sort things like numbers anyway.

I was hoping this feature would come in our next update since I saw it in XP, but I didn't think it was a very mac-like thing to have, and from the 2nd demo on the microsoft mac site, the smart button menu does look kind of windowsy... we'll see.

[sinebubble]

What's with the Project Central component? Does anyone know if it will read Microsoft Office Project (.mpp) files?

[-Q-]

If you want to email me a project file, I'd be happy to try. My hunch is 'no', tho' simply because the project center is more of a 'feature' than a project management application. It's designed to mimic some of the stuff found in Project, but I don't think it's nearly as feature rich. And I can't find an import option specific to the Project Center. But if you have a generic project file you want to send, I'll see what happens with the Entourage import function.

[typ993]

Of course, if Keynote were to output HTML (or if I knew how to quickly manipulate the XML) then goodbye Office -- take note Apple!

Unfortunately, Apple seems to think Keynote has dropped off the face of the earth. I really wanted to like it, but I found formatting slides (e.g., superscripts) was way more of a pain than it should be. And since presentation programs are all about formatting words on pages, this was unacceptable. At least PowerPoint will be getting the Keynote features I really wanted (showing presenter notes while showing actual slide to audience).

Anyone know if M$ improved the Visual Basic Editor in Excel? Or at least returned the features that used to be in there before v.X (like breakpoints)? The VBE in Mac Excel is so much worse than the Windoze version it's laughable.

[brapper]

any more word on a new version of Messenger being bundled?
(f ing messenger dependence...)

[sinebubble]

Originally posted by -Q-:
If you want to email me a project file, I'd be happy to try. My hunch is 'no', tho' simply because the project center is more of a 'feature' than a project management application. It's designed to mimic some of the stuff found in Project, but I don't think it's nearly as feature rich. And I can't find an import option specific to the Project Center. But if you have a generic project file you want to send, I'll see what happens with the Entourage import function.

I'll send you one tonight. This has probably been covered elsewhere, but does 2004 handle long file names correctly?

[MartiNZ]

Yeah, I've seen it covered elsewhere that it does handle 'long' names . Although I never understood why not anyway....

[-Q-]

Originally posted by brapper:
any more word on a new version of Messenger being bundled?
(f ing messenger dependence...)

Well, there's a 'new' version but I don't know what's new about it. It looks and acts almost exactly the same.

And yes, it handles long file names correctly. And it's about time.

[zl9600]

the big thing i'm confused about is price for office 2004.

i bought office x back in 02, but does that mean i have to pay up $289 for office 04 pro upgrade?

i had heard a more reasonable $99 upgrade (technical upgrade?>), but i see that 289 price floating around in the pre-order pages.

thought i'd ask before rethinking budgets!

[krove]

Ahhh!!! I cannot stand it when Microsoft PowerPoint is used for uses beyond slide presentation! The perversion of this software by those who refuse to learn to use a proper, better-suited application for their needs has become my new pet peeve!

Misusages that bother me:

• Full-size poster layout
• Creating web pages
• Oral reports that simply repeat what the slide says (oh, great! what good is a slide if the presenter just repeats it - or vice versa?)
• Desktop publishing substitute

This sh*t never seems to stop. Microsoft is just dumbing down society. People refuse to learn to spell because MS has made it so we don't have to know. This pervasive use really gets on my nerves because the quality of the material just reeks of the original application and has little genuine originality (regardless of content, usually). PowerPoint is rising the public enemy #1. (Not really, because there are far more important things in society about which people should be worried, but it is distressing nonetheless.)

Ok, I'm done...

</rant>

[krove]

I am happy, however, that Office 2004 will support Unicode, finally. Excel has bothered me for so long in that the Mac version would not allow input into cells of some of the most basic characters like greek letters beyond those accessible by the keyboard.

Hopefully this will all have changed with the new version, but without having seen this first hand, I am wary.

[Roy]

Originally posted by krove:
[B]Ahhh!!! I cannot stand it when Microsoft PowerPoint is used for uses beyond slide presentation! The perversion of this software by those who refuse to learn to use a proper, better-suited application for their needs has become my new pet peeve!

I repeat -- which one would do what I want to do?!!?

Misusages that bother me:[list][*]Oral reports that simply repeat what the slide says (oh, great! what good is a slide if the presenter just repeats it - or vice versa?)
/list]

Hilarious! You've obviously not spent much time in Japan and with academics in particular. I've sat in presentations where whole reports are read at me word for word while I follow along!

[zl9600]

• what we've learned:

powerpoint is the dumbing down of coporate america

• next steps:

continue to use it until we're promoted out of the position (eg on the receiving end of useless presentations, not the producing end)

(gif logo of company, scaled to 550%, here)

[sinebubble]

With Q's assistance, it was found that MS Office Project files cannot be opened by Project Central. This and the lack of Visio support are hurting Office 2004.

[mitchell_pgh]

PowerPoint is misused all the time.

I had a friend that would send driving directions to his house in PowerPoint!

He would also take all of his photos and place them in to a slide and theme them!!!

[Charles Bouldin]

Originally posted by typ993:
Unfortunately, Apple seems to think Keynote has dropped off the face of the earth. I really wanted to like it, but I found formatting slides (e.g., superscripts) was way more of a pain than it should be. And since presentation programs are all about formatting words on pages, this was unacceptable. At least PowerPoint will be getting the Keynote features I really wanted (showing presenter notes while showing actual slide to audience).

Keynote does let you view notes on one display and present slides on the other. Check the preferences.

Text formatting, especially math, but also superscripts is done wonderfully by "LaTeX equation editor". You have to learn a little TeX, and this is probably overkill, but I find it just fabulous, because you get the full power of the TeX typesetting program, and then just drag/drop the resulting pdf files into Keynote. Beautiful results....far better than anything else I've seen in presentation software.

[typ993]

Keynote does let you view notes on one display and present slides on the other. Check the preferences.

Text formatting, especially math, but also superscripts is done wonderfully by "LaTeX equation editor". You have to learn a little TeX, and this is probably overkill, but I find it just fabulous, because you get the full power of the TeX typesetting program, and then just drag/drop the resulting pdf files into Keynote. Beautiful results....far better than anything else I've seen in presentation software.

You've misinterpreted my post. I realize Keynote has separate display/present, that's what I liked about it. I didn't like the clunky formatting, and frankly, going to LaTeX so I can stick a superscript (like a registered trademark) on a piece of text, export that to PDF, then import to Keynote is WAY more of a pain that what Keynote makes me do now. Of course, if you are whipping up a lot of equations, that's another matter, but for my business presentations, Keynote does not measure up. It could, with some changes by Apple, but as of right now, it appears to be iRoadkill™.

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Roy:
Of course, if Keynote were to output HTML (or if I knew how to quickly manipulate the XML) then goodbye Office -- take note Apple!

You do know that you can export Keynote to Quicktime, and I believe you can still convert Quicktime to Flash 4, right?

I'm not sure if that helps you or not, but I thought I would mention it.

[Roy]

Yep, I know about Quicktime. I've tried it and had mixed success. The students need to be able to spend time on particular slides, read in detail, and, most importantly, watch embeded Quicktime movies on the slides. This doesn't work well when its a movie embeded within a movie. Pity.