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WebSlides – Making HTML presentations easy

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188 points by RealGeek 9 years ago · 66 comments

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jagger27 9 years ago

I have a bit of feedback: the scrolljacking doesn't work at all for me in Safari on macOS with a MacBook touchpad. All it does is activate the edge-bounce animation. Chrome is a little janky too, half activating the bounce animation and then advancing to the next slide. Firefox is fine since it doesn't do the edge-bounce.

The worst crime (to me anyway) is the history spam and this applies to all browsers. Hitting back changes the URL but not the slide that's shown, curiously. If you're going to go this route, that's fine, just update the visible slide.

I would prefer if it didn't make me jump 50 history items back to get to where I came from.

  • godot 9 years ago

    Right. I actually don't mind the 50 history items, but it definitely feels like a bug when the URL changes upon hitting Back but does not update the visible slide.

  • jlantunez 9 years ago

    Thanks, jagger27. Touchpad is my priority right now. I'm just a CSS guy :)

armandososa 9 years ago

Something to be aware: this is OP's first Github project. Let's be nice so it isn't the last.

  • hakakadera 9 years ago

    for someone starting out with their first github project, one would appreciate your comment.. although one may be 100% OK for their work to be the subject of any rational analysis, it is worthwhile to know the constructive motive behind such discussion and thereby even criticism may encourage more future contributions (moving far from being the last project).

    +1 for being vocal

    • hakakadera 9 years ago

      I humbly give the finger to the idiots who downvoted this. Reflects your elitism and easy priveleged life with no idea of what its like to live elsewhere other than where you grew up.

      No wonder, valley is full of bullies who just did 10000 hours of practise but 0 hours of being human.

jvehent 9 years ago

https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/ is my framework of choice when making slides.

franciscop 9 years ago

Please make the website more usable. It has a really nice design but poor UX. At least I should be able to scroll to... scroll. And hiding elements until you hover over an invisible part of the screen is totally against a good UX (discoverability). This could be okay in games or in purely artistic webpages, but if you intend your visitors to use the page and read the content it is counterproductive.

Edit: being this a project for making slides on a website with such a poor UX gives a really bad feeling for your potential clients. Will the project itself have the same problems? Will I be trying to hurry to finish the presentation and not find a button to save as PDF because it's invisible? etc

Edit: the link was changed from the website to the github.com, this comment was intended for the original URL: https://webslides.tv/

  • dfinninger 9 years ago

    I agree here. When I got to the site I thought that it was just a placeholder image until I saw your comment and tried the keyboard.

    Browsing the web is pretty mouse/trackpad driven. Especially for landing sites like this. It just felt un-intuitive.

  • colordrops 9 years ago

    This is the ultimate article on scrolling UX:

    https://bost.ocks.org/mike/scroll/

    Basically, don't mess with built-in scrolling functionality - just change how your page renders based on scroll position.

  • jlantunez 9 years ago

    Thanks for your suggestion, franciscop. Check again (desktop view) :) https://webslides.tv/

  • franciscop 9 years ago

    to jlantunez (I cannot reply in your comment), better as I can see the footer now, but it is barely visible, the nav is still hidden and you should probably be listening to the scroll and then scroll the page depending on that, as that's the expected behavior on websites. on('scroll') probably doesn't work as you want to listen for intent, but google gave me really good results on this topic back in the day

reimertz 9 years ago

I created CLI for creating simplistic presentations for my first lightning talk. It turned out pretty great so I open sourced it. It has some neat features such as live-reloading server, anonymous deployment, mirrored highlighting and cursor and speaker mode. https://reimertz.github.io/lagom

Would be awesome to get some more contributors.. hrmf, I mean, users. :)

  • lindig 9 years ago

    Have you tried it on Safari? I see mostly empty pages.

    • reimertz 9 years ago

      I accidentally pushed a what I thought to be a fix that turned out to break everything in v0.6.4. everything is fine now in v0.6.5.

      Sorry about that.

ohstopitu 9 years ago

I generally use RemarkJS to create my slides (https://github.com/gnab/remark).

However, what's the difference between this tool and https://slides.com/ (and it's MIT open sourced at https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/) ?

EDIT: not saying you should not create this tool...but what was the motivation? (or the differentiation factors?)

  • jlantunez 9 years ago

    Hi ohstopitu,

    Slides.com is an great tool. WebSlides is a solution for making presentations, landings, and long-forms. It's also a starting point for building custom CSS frameworks.

    For more on why I decided to build WebSlides check out this post: https://medium.com/p/fa7a9e37ff97/ Thanks!

pythonaut_16 9 years ago

Here's another pretty cool one using Elixir and Phoenix Channels (Websockets): https://github.com/ernie/venture

It also has markdown based slides but syncs the presentation to clients via websockets, and allows for interactive slides with things like Polls and live chats.

  • davidbanham 9 years ago

    Reveal.js can also sync the presentation to clients via websockets with its multiplex plugin.

    You can use the same mechanism to have the presentation on a computer connected to your projector and control the slides from your phone (or any other computer)

dagenleg 9 years ago

Yes, but why make html presentations at all? Are there any tangible benefits except for fancy animations?

  • CJefferson 9 years ago

    One advantage is I have 5 year old) keynote presentations that keynote refuses to open (tells me file format is too old), and 3 year old PowerPoint slides the new version messes up the formatting of. I'm slightly more confident my HTML will continue to render right, and at least open!

  • m_fayer 9 years ago

    Portability. If you have to send a presentation around, embedding fonts in PowerPoint only works if the viewer is on a Windows machine, and keynote is not an option if your viewer is on a PC.

    • dublinben 9 years ago

      If you're worried about portability, you can export as a PDF. You could also use LibreOffice, which is cross-platform.

      • viraptor 9 years ago

        PDF has two problems for me:

        One is that you can't have speaker notes integrated in the presentation the same way you can with PP or reveal.js.

        The other one is that it doesn't scale. You export the slides in one display ratio and it stays like that. Most web presentation formats will adjust to whatever your display is doing.

      • m_fayer 9 years ago

        I often have complex animations and embedded video that will not survive the PDF export, and am sending presentations to people who can't just be asked to install libreoffice.

  • plaguuuuuu 9 years ago

    The coolest thing ever is when a talk at a conf has the URL for the HTML slide deck, so if you miss something on a prev slide you can go back and check, & you don't need to figure out where/if the slides were published when you want to revisit after the talk.

  • tarboreus 9 years ago

    Personally I'd rather make a presentation in HTML than in a magic GUI. Also works on a broader array of platforms. But your mileage may vary.

  • detaro 9 years ago

    in addition to what others have said: teamwork. Coordinating a group working on Powerpoint slides is quite annoying, text-based formats are a lot easier to manage and merge, especially for technical folk familiar with git & co. Google Slides is the only GUI variant I know that deals with this by syncing changes immediately, and it has other weaknesses.

  • teleclimber 9 years ago

    I'd say so, yes. Mostly just because HTML is ubiquitous, it means your presentation continues to live on after your talk by uploading it to your site. Plus your slides can be responsive, accessible, searchable, linkable (if you build them correctly of course).

  • jlantunez 9 years ago

    Good karma (hypertext) and productivity (presentations, landings, and long-forms). Designers, marketers, and journalists can now focus on the content.

    • danappelxx 9 years ago

      I think you got it backwards... right now non-tech-savvy people focus on the content with their tooling (PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides). Your tooling introduces a new layer of complexity: now they have to learn HTML and css to do the _exact same thing_. What you built looks great, but you have to reconsider who you're marketing it towards. I can't imagine anybody but a programmer using this.

      If your goal is to build a platform for presentations like medium is for articles, isn't that what speakerdeck.com already is? If you want to build a better speakerdeck, just say that then? "A better way to create and share slides online"

      • jlantunez 9 years ago

        This is the first release of WebSlides. I don't want to build a better Speakerdeck. WebSlides is about telling/sharing engaging stories (css, indexable content...).

  • tomcam 9 years ago

    No need to download any software. No need to choose between PowerPoint or Keynote.

geraldbauer 9 years ago

Still early - I've put together an "Awesome Slideshows" page -> https://github.com/slideshow-s9/awesome-slideshows listing (awesome) html presentation / slideshow templates, themes, tools and more.

eranation 9 years ago

Very nice! Feature request - make this also friendly for simple websites, (just hide the next previous and add a navigation bar) Much simpler than bootstrap for non technical people, well done!

geraldbauer 9 years ago

If you want to write your talks / presentations in plain text w/ markdown formatting I put together a ready-to-fork jekyll (github pages) theme called jekyll-talks-themes -> https://github.com/henrythemes/jekyll-talks-theme (using the s6 (html) slidekit -> https://github.com/slidekit ).

gear54rus 9 years ago

On a side note, does anyone know about something like that for simple docs?

Like if I want to migrate away for those bloated un-diffable PDFs and DOCXs to a HTML?

Preferably it should support importing from those 2 formats.

geraldbauer 9 years ago

For for html presentations packaged for github pages (jekyll) and writing in plaint text with markdown formatting, see the slideshow-templates org -> https://github.com/slideshow-templates Ready-to-fork (use) packs include: deck.js, impress.js (3D!), reveal.js, g5, s6, s5, and more.

xjia 9 years ago

This looks really useful. Is there a way to make it directly printable? It would be great if I can use it for my lectures.

redleggedfrog 9 years ago

That's pretty slick, nice work.

I don't make a lot of presentations, but the fact I could figure out a lot of it in minutes makes this attractive. I definitely see it as a web tool more than a marketing / management tool. If I showed our marketing dept markup they'd have a conniption fit.

explorigin 9 years ago

Pressing "B" to black the screen is a feature that I consider critical that is missing here.

  • viraptor 9 years ago

    What do you use it for?

    • explorigin 9 years ago

      It adds an element of professionalism to a presentation. You can hook up your lappy to the projector. Once things are tested, you black the screen while you wait for people to file in. This way the introducer can have the audience's full attention before your talk.

      Also, it can be a powerful tool when you want the audience to pay attention to you and not the slides (if you need to go off-script for example).

      • viraptor 9 years ago

        For the first part, configuring a side screen, rather than a mirror screen works as well. Don't put the presentation on the extra screen until you want to.

        Not very helpful for going off script though.

    • hawski 9 years ago

      It seems that people use it to help audience focus. You would black the screen between slides. Probably you could emulate it by including blank slides in-between.

      There is of course other opinion, that it can be more distracting, but it depends on material and speaker: http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2011/03/29/powerpoint-why-you...

sanjayts 9 years ago

I must say that I completely missed the arrow keys and the page numbers at the bottom; the font color is way too light for the background. Maybe making that a bit more prominent would go a long way.

navies 9 years ago

There's an issue where navigating to the next slide from the first slide brings you back to the first slide. I'm not sure if this is intended.

imafish 9 years ago

Project looks fine - but I don't see myself switching from latex beamer any time soon.

metasean 9 years ago

It works great on IceCatMobile and is open source - so it has my support!

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