[walter99]

Hi,

there seems to be a lot of reporting about Pages but I haven't read a lot about Keynote 2 - especially the new features.

So, for example, can you now switch between applications while a Keynote presentation is running?

Is Keynote 2 AppleScript-able?

Or can you have more than one bulleted list object on a slide?

I guess there must be some sort of self-running presentations. How flexible is this? Can I define how long each slide should be presented? Can I even specify the exact timely build process of a slide?

Any feedback on Keynote 2 is welcome

TIA
walter

[kenw]

So far I have only checked a few items of special interest to me, and Keynote 2 has one of them. It is now possible to use the cursor as a pointer during a presentation. A few times I actually have had to export a Keynote presentation as a PDF file and then present it with Acrobat just so I could use the cursor as a pointer (no physical or laser pointers were available).

What Keynote 2 does not have is the ability to have more than one bulleted list, or the ability to crop images. I'll look into the other points you asked about, but first I have to move a lot of snow.

[Nebagakid]

cropping images? you can just mask them, which is better anyway because it is less destructive.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
cropping images? you can just mask them, which is better anyway because it is less destructive.

Bingo... either mask it, or if you need a pixel accurate crop, you should probably take it in to a graphic program.

[kenw]

Thanks for the heads up on masking. I hadn't found that yet. Now all I need is the multiple bullet lists.

[chwbauer]

I played with it a little bit at the apple store yesterday, and it seems you can still only have one bulleted list per page. Too bad...

[kcmac]

Has anyone tried importing a page from Pages yet? Can you animate different parts of the page like the header, footer and body separately?

Could you use Pages to make the multiple bulleted lists (multiple columns) and then import easily to Keynote?

[walter99]

Thanks for the responses so far. Great to have a coursor now during presentations!

Can anyone please check if it is possible to switch applications during a presentation without stopping it first?

Also, is Keynote AppleScript-able? (to find out, just open Script editor and check the dictionary for Keynote).

Thanks,
walter

[Visnaut]

Yeah, opening up Keynote's dictionary in Applescript shows lots of actions you can perform on slides or on slideshows.

You can't directly switch to any arbitrary application during a slideshow, but you can set up a hyperlink that will either go to a webpage or an email message. With those two, it'll suspend the slideshow and take you to the respective app. When you switch back to Keynote it'll resume the slideshow where you left off. So technically, you could use this to exit your slideshow temporarily, switch to a specific app, and then go back.

In setting up the webpage link, I also tried making a "file:///" and ftp link, but Keynote would not accept either.

One thing I'm unhappy to report though are serious clipping and stuttering issues during presentations when you have set an mp3 file to play in the background as well as one or two medium-sized images. They're even worse if you use an iTMS aac file. It helps a little if you set the "Reduce Cube/Flip transitions to avoid clipping" and "Copy audio and movies into document" options in the prefs.

Running through the slideshow once will improve performance the second time around, but if you'd like any sort of audio accompanying your presentation, it's much better to just use iTunes to play a file in the background. Even then I still noticed there would be moments where my presentation would just seize up while it loads images. This on a 1.5GHz 17" PB w/ 512MB RAM, currently Apple's flagship Powerbook. Not very happy with that particular aspect, but as always, YMMV™.

[walter99]

Thanks - that's good news, finally we got AppleScript support natively

Does Keynote 2 feel more responsive (i.e. while typing text) than Keynote 1.1, or did things get even worse?

[Love Calm Quiet]

I've been postponing acquiring either PowerPoint or Keynote until the Keynote 2 came out.

What is anyone's take on the Free Press micro-rev of Keynote (& Pages):

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/tech...e_20050125.htm

"The other iWork program is actually a long overdue upgrade to the Keynote application Apple released a couple of years ago to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint. The new version really looks sharp, and it's easier to insert photos and animations. Though greatly improved, it still seems a bit klutzy compared with PowerPoint. For instance, it lacks PowerPoint's ease of imbedding and playing movies in slides."

Imagine an Apple app being "klutzy" compared to something in Office. Do those of you with experience agree about the relative (dis)ease of imbedding and playing movies? What about the ease of inserting photos and animations?

[schalliol]

Keynote 2 doesn't fix a cripling problem, poor Keynote to PowerPoint conversion. All sorts of things are messed up when you try to export, though it might be slightly better than v1. It's not that I normally would send a PPT to people, but sometimes people want a copy of your preso and even if they're Mac users they won't have Keynote. Sure, you can export as a movie, but try emailing that or having someone download if you set to high quality. Most people have PPT. We were waiting to decide whether to drop Keynote and go back to PPT until this version came out, sadly, back to PPT we go.

Another thing that isn't good is the way that builds are still shown, you have an object like a large graph that should appear on top when you click during the preso appearing on the top when you're working. As a result, you find yourself having to move your builds out of the way to access the backmost objects. This makes it really hard to edit and also print.

[kenw]

I've never used movies in real presentations, but I had to give it a try. It is very easy to insert movies in both Keynote 2 and Powerpoint 2004. Keynote 2 gives you the option of previewing the movie in the media browser.

The only significant difference I noticed is that Keynote 2 begins playing the movie as soon as the slide appears, or as soon as the movie builds in. There is no way to pause the movie. In Powerpoint, you have the option to double-click the movie to start it, and then click again to pause it. Seems like that could be handy.

But there is certainly nothing "klutzy" about Keynote compared to Powerpoint. That is why I stopped using Powerpoint a year ago.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
I've been postponing acquiring either PowerPoint or Keynote until the Keynote 2 came out.

What is anyone's take on the Free Press micro-rev of Keynote (& Pages):

http://www.freep.com/money/tech/tech...e_20050125.htm

"The other iWork program is actually a long overdue upgrade to the Keynote application Apple released a couple of years ago to compete with Microsoft PowerPoint. The new version really looks sharp, and it's easier to insert photos and animations. Though greatly improved, it still seems a bit klutzy compared with PowerPoint. For instance, it lacks PowerPoint's ease of imbedding and playing movies in slides."

Imagine an Apple app being "klutzy" compared to something in Office. Do those of you with experience agree about the relative (dis)ease of imbedding and playing movies? What about the ease of inserting photos and animations?

While the guy from the Detroit Free Press (Mike Wendland) is pretty pro-Mac, I think he got this one wrong. Keynote 2 is super slick. Puts PowerPoint to shame. Sure, there are still a few things PP can do that Keynote 2 can't, but there are far more things Keynote can do that PP can't even dream of.

The best demo of Keynote 2 I've seen so far is the iWork Tour that you can get from the Help menu of either Keynote or Pages. Quite impressive.

[walter99]

Just came across this Keynote2 review:
http://macteens.com/more.php?id=604_0_1_0_C

Not answering all the questions, but might be interesting for some of you.