Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

imakewebthings.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 63 posts

Re: Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

#4

Post by generalk »

This looks beautiful, and I'm definitely in love with the idea of writing presentations in HTML/JS/CSS rather than in a blob of Keynote or Powerpoint, but there's one thing keeping me back:

Keynote gives me a second display with a timer, the current and next slides, and notes. That's huge. On the rare occasion that I present I don't script out everything I'm going to say, and the presenter info keeps me from rambling too long or forgetting what my next point is.

Re: Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

#5

Post by masklinn »

muxxa wrote: post #2

Looks good - just make sure you bring a laptop with a modern browser installed to the presentation. Compare: http://pepelsbey.github.com/shower/en.htm

> Compare: http://pepelsbey.github.com/shower/en.htm

Your link is significantly worse than deck.js on "non-modern browser" (Camino in my case, so ~FF3): shower's slidemap is completely broken and the slides do not open "full document". deck.js has layout glitches in the navigation and status displays, and drops the transition effects (and stuff like drop-shadows) but the slides themselves work.

S5 is more spartan, but more reliable than either proposal.

Edit: and as opposed to S5, neither can really be printed even in a browser able to display them correctly (tested in Safari 5.1):

* S5 has a pared down print CSS, you get only the slide contents (not sure if it's possible to get additional notes), ugly but good.

* deck.js is unprintable, the printed document changes erratically depending on the slide you're on and it never looks like something that could ever be used

* shower is completely broken when a slide is fullscreened (prints a single page displaying the bottom half of the current view), in "overview" mode it does have a nice print css... but one which emphasizes the looks of the slideshow rather than having good/useful prints: there's a truckload of space between slides, an ugly drop shadow around each and every slide (drop shadows which don't even appear in the overview), apparently no handling of page breaks (so slides are cut off across pages, half on one page and half on the next)

Why would you print them, you ask? Well to give printouts of course, but also to export to PDF, a very useful feature of MacOSX.

edit: tried Shower in Opera (11.11) since it's by an Opera Software guy, it's a train-wreck: fullscreen slides don't work and print is terminally broken and utterly unusable. Latest version is 11.50 so I'll probably try again with that one, but not really impressed so far.

edit2: tested in 11.50, "fullscreen" slides work correctly, print is still completely broken and unusable.

Re: Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

#6

Post by fredoliveira »

I like the idea behind this and other projects like it, but I have one main issue with it/them:

It isn't trivial to share presentations, which is something that most people will want to do. Sadly the fact that you can build a presentation in HTML (and that people can look at it online) doesn't outweigh sharing a PDF. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for lighter more flexible solutions (which html is), but the market as a whole generally isn't.

Re: Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

#8

Post by jondot »

I really like the aesthetics but as mentioned here it's not portable / shareable offline. In addition - more than the fact that you need a modern browser (which is ok, really), you need a modern projector for such a resolution, and this is nothing you can just download and install.

Nothing is more awkward than displaying such a presentation on a backwards projector which cuts it off.

I use this regularily, which solves both problems: https://github.com/geraldb/slideshow

I plan to use this from now on, since it has nicer UI: https://github.com/juliocesar/shining

For deck.js to be perfect it

- needs to understand markdown

- needs to use precent (%) scaling so it could scale resolutions easily

- export to an offline format.

All in all it has astonishing UI effects which makes me want to use it.

Re: Deck.js: A JavaScript library for building modern HTML presentations.

#10

Post by jwarzech »

I love these new projects for building web based presentations. Back in 2003 I had to take a speech course and quickly got sick of every presentation where someone would be abusing PowerPoint with an abundance of typewriter and laser animations. I started writing all my presentations in HTML/Javascript and editing together compilation videos to stand out. Looking back it was a great way to practice the craft.
Post reply on HN