The homepage looks really professional and slick. A link to a dummy presentation would be a valuable addition though, as not every person is confident signing up to try it.
Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#42Someone should make a draw.io for presentations.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#43Hey all, Sizle is an alternative to PowerPoint for sales teams that need to see when their document was opened by a client, what slides they saw, time spent, and it can also automatically schedule a follow up with the viewer. Currently testing it with a bunch of companies here in Australia, but if anyone here is in sales and marketing I'd love to have you try out the (experimental) beta :)
Not sure how I feel about this level of tracking TBH. I can see how the data might benefit some sales teams, but mostly I think it'll be hoovered up, stored and nothing done with it. Have you put consent mechanisms in place to allow readers to opt out of tracking, while still letting them read the document/slides?
Hey Gordon, I’m pushing a patch in early Jan to address this exact issue.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#44Hey all, Sizle is an alternative to PowerPoint for sales teams that need to see when their document was opened by a client, what slides they saw, time spent, and it can also automatically schedule a follow up with the viewer. Currently testing it with a bunch of companies here in Australia, but if anyone here is in sales and marketing I'd love to have you try out the (experimental) beta :)
So, if you intend to sell in the EU, don’t forget the reader will need to give consent to be tracked. And thus is an option you should build in globally too if you believe in people’s privacy.
Thanks, I responded to a similar post earlier but we are pushing a feature soon with a minimalistic consent notification dialog that gives a recipient opt-out ability.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#45Does it provide the following? * Presentations can be exported as PDF. * Presentations can be downloaded as a single stand-alone HTML file for offline presentation. * Presentations can be imported/exported from/to Powerpoint. * Collaborative editing.
> single stand-alone HTML file for offline presentation. TBH HTML isn't a really good format for stuff like this, as HTML is text-only. Same goes for HAR. The moment you want to embed large images/video you run into size problems. It would be really nice if browsers supported some kind of archive that contains multiple resources like images, wasm files, etc, that would all be accessible by the browser if you open it.…
> TBH HTML isn't a really good format for stuff like this, as HTML is text-only. Same goes for HAR. The moment you want to embed large images/video you run into size problems.
Is this really a problem for up to 100 MB? In my experience that would already be a huge Powerpoint presentation including a lot of detailed images or some smaller videos. Most presentations I handle are below 100 slides and below 10 MB.
If it goes beyond that, there will also be other problems. Nobody likes to handle a 5 GB presentation.
Encoding the binary files as BASE64 would add some overhead, indeed, but having a presentation as a single file that can be played by any modern browser on any modern device would provide tremendous usability benefits.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#46The homepage looks really professional and slick. A link to a dummy presentation would be a valuable addition though, as not every person is confident signing up to try it.
Yes, still very experimental at the moment but working on a way to get a demo presentation into the landing page nicely :)
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#47Given that many larger businesses are already going to have well established workflows around PowerPoint presentations that are going to be hard to shift, you may be better trying to control the ‘analytics’ portion of the value chain rather than the presentation creation segment. Have you considered building a tool where people could upload their existing PPTX presentations into Sizle and access analytics on them? I…
Hey Kristianc, Sizle currently supports PDF upload for this exact purpose and are working on PPT currently. We’re not trying to shift any sales workflows, the goal is to mainly give power users access to insights in a platform agnostic approach.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#48Nice, this is an ambitious project and your fresh execution does a good job of cutting through the staleness of typical PowerPoints. I played around, here's some feedback: - Really like the templates. Lots more would be very helpful so that I can build out a presentation quickly without having to fiddle with detail. - Top toolbar appears crammed when editing text on a laptop. Tried in both Firefox and Chrome. https:/…
Agree on all points, a template library is currently in the works, as are some responsiveness fixes :)
We’re really in alpha, and many of the features are experimental so we’re seeing what works and taking what our alpha users are saying seriously.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the local presentation mode a single file that can be transferred via USB stick to another PC that has no internet connection?
The local presentation mode will be a joint release with a Desktop app that can be used without internet access, it won’t include portable files at this stage but it’s on our roadmap.
Dependence on an App is not good for long term viability. Before joining any new ecosystem I check if there is a clear route to transition out of it in the long term. People like me are allergic to lock-in-effects and provider/service-dependencies that could lock oneself out of ones own data if the provider shuts down. Given that export to a common format like pptx works great I will consider this software.
The paradox here is that the better the export functionality works the less people will actually need it.
Re: Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of whatabouting it, maybe you can answer sadfklsjlkjwt’s question: do they know this is happening?
Recipients of Mailchimp campaigns have the same experience as recipients of Sizle presentations. They’re not told the sender will be notified when the document is opened however this type of tracking is fairly commonplace. For comparison, you might allow cookies from a website you visit regularly, even though they’ve notified you do you really know the extent to which you’re being tracked by a cookie like GA? A large…
Being so uncomfortable to just explain one of the core value propositions of your product in plain language is not a good look. If you’re not confident in what your product does or able to explain why it’s a good thing, you might want to redesign it.