In an earlier post, I introduced Simple HTML Slides and an anonymous sync server that lets your audience follow along via the web. It uses some deep jQuery magic from Janne Aukia’s wonderful zoomooz.js.
There’s now a new feature that will let you take a PDF of a slide deck and quickly and easily turn it into an on-line presentation that syncs just like the earlier HTML slides.
On a Mac the process is amazingly simple. I’ve been able to put a 60-slide presentation on-line in under three minutes! Just browse to the PDF Slides page and follow the easy instructions there.
I don’t know of a workflow for Windows that is as simple as what’s on that page. It should be possible to cobble together a PhotoShop action but I’d rather find a solution that doesn’t require a $600 software package. If you know a quick, simple way to make a directory of web images from a PDF (preferably with free & open source software), please post a comment.
UPDATE: This post, and the PDF support feature of Simple HTML Slides have caused a lot of confusion. Many people see this and come to the erroneous conclusion that Simple HTML Slides aren’t actually done in HTML and the only way to make a presentation is to pour a PDF into Simple HTML Slides. That isn’t true. Supporting PDFs of other presentation formats is just an added feature of Simple HTML Slides. The real power of Simple HTML Slides shows when you write your slides in HTML. See the project page for more details.
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Ted,
The PDF to HTML slide conversion was really a hack atop the core Simple HTML Slides structure. It lets someone with an existing slide deck put them online and synchronize the presentation across hundreds of machines in just a few minutes, …something Powerpoint couldn’t do the last time I looked.
But it’s always preferable to use the underlying Simple HTML Slides system in it’s raw form. If you do that, then your slides will be searchable and accessible.
You can use any HTML authoring tool (even notepad) to write Simple HTML Slides. I don’t have a conversion path for Powerpoint to Simple HTML Slides, but it doesn’t take more than a few minutes to cut and paste the text for a couple of dozen slides from Powerpoint’s outline to an HTML file. The format and specs for Simple HTML Slides are both open and published. The last time I searched for them, those for Powerpoint were not. …although someone with sharper code cutting skills than mine might be able to write a utility to do it. Post a note here if you do!
Hi All–
Just to raise the challenge bar a little, I’m interested in converting PPT(x) to HTML5 and keeping the text on the slides accessible. The method you are discussing encodes the text into image format where it is no longer searchable and accessible to a screen reader.
Your thoughts?
Ted
I am using ImageMagick convert to extract PDF pages into series of images. It’s a free and open source software to convert between formats, and if you don’t afraid from the command line, it is the fastest way to do it I guess.
Tomer,
ImageMagick and netPBM’s pstopnm both do the trick quickly and easily from the command line. …and they are truly cross platform solutions. There are even ImageMagick binaries for HP-UX and Solaris! But the target audience for Simple HTML Slides never uses the command line, and I fear that suggesting they must would loose the majority of them. Perhaps a GUI wrapper around ImageMagick is the right answer, although I worry about the install process given the audience.