A Better Mousetrap

Wow! Eric Meyer has created a new way of putting together slide presentations. Or maybe I should say that he has put together a way of putting together presentations using the well established technologies of XHTML, CSS and Javascript. This is timely news as I am putting together a slide show to introduce a workshop later this week.

I have two basic criticisms of most slide presentation systems. First is the need to have an overly elaborate tool in order to create a simple slide show. Powerpoint is far too much tool for at least 90% of the users (according to what I’ve seen). This relates to my second criticism, which is that presenters often tend to focus on creating a slick presentation rather than an effective one. As the saying goes, power corrupts but powerpoint corrupts absolutely!

But with , instead of needing a costly tool to put together a basic slide presentation, all you need is a text editor. (An editor that highlights or colour codes the HTML and CSS does make the job much easier!) Eric has dubbed his new presentation system S⁵, which is short for Simple Standards-based Slide Show System. Take a look at his introductory slide show to get an idea just how effective (without excessive slickness) this system is. Then start using it for your presentations, and spread the word.