You can build an Adobe Presenter publication over an underlying PowerPoint publication at any stage of development—whether you start a new publication from scratch or open an existing slideshow.
Presenter output can be used on mobile devices that run Flash Lite 3. Many features are supported, including slide animations and backgrounds, audio, and embedded SWF and FLV files. Some Presenter content isn’t supported in Flash Lite 3, however, including the side panel, quizzes, themes, and the playbar.
Setting Up the Presentation
To save time when configuring Presenter settings, it’s quickest to have the set of slides created and the basic titling finished. That way, when you select some of the configuration options, you won’t have to guess at settings. Let’s get started.
- Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
- Choose Adobe Presenter > Presentation Settings to display the Presentation Settings dialog box.
- Configure the presentation features as desired. (The following sections discuss some of the more useful options.)
- On the Attachments tab, select and add files to attach to the presentation. An attachment can be either a file or a link. Click Add to open the Add Attachment dialog box, where you can specify content such as spreadsheets or charts that you want to provide with the presentation.
- After you’ve finished modifying the settings, click OK to close the dialog box.
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Create slide titles to give users easy access to any slide. Check that titles appear in the PowerPoint outline for all slides, including graphic-only slides, before publishing your presentation.
Appearance Options
On the Appearance tab in the Presentation Settings dialog box, you can control the publication’s appearance:
- Type an alternate title for your presentation if you don’t want to use the default title, which is the PowerPoint file’s name.
- Enter a summary for the presentation to describe its purpose and contents. If you use your presentation on Adobe Connect Pro, the summary is shown with other presentation data; in a PDF or local presentation, the summary isn’t used.
- To configure the appearance and function of the SWF interface, select and edit a theme.
Playback Options
On the Playback tab in the Presentation Settings dialog box, you can specify the settings for playing the presentation:
- Select Auto Play on Start if you want the presentation to begin immediately after loading. Otherwise, the user has to click the Play button on the presentation’s interface to start the presentation.
- By default, Presenter runs the presentation once and then stops. If you want it to loop (for example, for presentations used in a kiosk or public display), select Loop presentation.
- Select Include Slide Numbers in Outline if you want to include slide numbers in the Outline pane of the presentation—a handy option if your presentation will have different presenters with varying levels of familiarity with the content.
- If you want the presentation to stop after a slide’s animation is complete, choose Pause After Each Animation. With this option selected, the viewer has time to make notes or check out the finished slide before continuing.
- Slides display according to the length of their audio or video. For slides without media, specify a display time in seconds. The default is five seconds.
Quality Options
On the Quality tab in the Presentation Settings dialog box, you can control the presentation’s image and audio qualities, based on how you intend to use the presentation:
- Click the Publish For drop-down arrow and choose My Computer, Adobe Connect Pro, or Adobe PDF to optimize the levels automatically, or select the options manually.
- To specify Flash movie preloading options, select the Control Preloading checkbox and choose one of the following settings, based on your presentation’s characteristics:
- Download Slides Completely Before Playback. Choose this option if users are likely to use slow download speeds to view the presentation. It will take a short while to download all the slide contents and will delay the start of the presentation, but there won’t be interruptions during the presentation.
- Disable Preloading of Embedded Flash Content. Choose this option if you have multiple Flash movies in your presentation, and two or more are on consecutive slides. This way, the first movie must finish playing before the second one can start playing.
- To save some time in configuring future projects, select the Use These Settings for New Presentations checkbox.
For the most part, Presenter’s default choices for image quality are fine—with a few exceptions. To prevent blurry content, be sure to set image quality to high in your presentation if it includes charts, Smart Art, WordArt, Quick Styles, or shapes using 3D effects such as shadows. Because you can view presentations on mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs that use Flash Lite 3, use the low-quality setting for images and audio to reduce the size of the finished file if you intend your output for mobile devices.
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You don’t have to worry about installing Flash Player, or whether you have the right version. The latest version of the Flash Player (Flash Player 9) is installed when you install Presenter.