New New Uses for Powerpoint

[daveturner]

Here's a new new use for powerpoint. One thing that I did last year at a church I was at was make an auto-run powerpoint cd for new people who visited my youth ministry. Starting in Powerpoint 98, there have been a lot more interactive uses for powerpoint, and I was able to make a sort of welcome CD Rom in which the students could interact with. They could play games, get links to various web sites, install the Bible, watch funny videos, do a years worth of devotions etc. I hada student who was a flash expert who helped me spice some animations up as well.

All of it was easy too!

The only hard part was figuring out how to program it so that those who did not own a pp viewer could watch it, and then also to get it to autorun, but I was finally able to pull it off, and it worked great! I used Adobe Premiere to make video transitions, and each section of the Rom had a cool animation into it.

When it was finally finished, it looked like an interactive DVD for students. It was cool.

[adowen]

Have you thought about posting the PowerPoint file itself into the Gallery/File Exchange.... some of us may be able to get some neat ideas out of your work!

[Nathan J]

That's something that I've wanted to do for a while. Besides the issue of time, I never really knew how to put something like that together (I tried to teach myself flash 4 but never got anywhere).

It sounds like you did a great job! I am looking forward to seeing it if you decide to post it.

Nathan, have you ever checked out a program called "Swish?" It's like Flash (can export to SWI, SWF, HTML, AVI files), only 1000 times easier to learn. www.swishzone.com

[Nathan J]

Actually, I looked Swish over a few days ago when I saw it mentioned in another post.

It looked pretty cool, but I am still running Win 95 so I couldn't try it . Maybe I will on my dad's computer. He has Win 98.

I have played with a program that creates Flash made by Coffee Cup Software www.coffeecup.com and like it but have never bought the full version.

During the next few years (as I am taking that busy thing they call college), I am hoping that I will be able to take a Flash course but until then Swish may just be the way to go .

Thanks for the suggestion!

[sempei13]

BTW, how did you get the link to the video file to remain accurate when you burned to CD? I tried to "author" a cd in PPT about a 1.5 years ago and found that the video files would always link to the original file (on the hd), but not the file on the cd. I even tried inserting a video file from a cd and then burning the presentation on a disk with the file in the same place.

[Soundguy]

What might have happened is when you made the link it was only a shortcut. Did you try a copy and paste?