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Ask HN: What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there?

by altoz on 10/28/17, 3:10 PM with 98 comments

I'm doing a lot of teaching and I've been using PowerPoint. I recently saw some people use Prezi and liked what they were able to do to map concepts visually to make them easier to understand. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the features that made Prezi powerful have been neutered in Prezi Next and isn't able to do a lot of what I'm looking for (no path editing, no infinite canvas, etc). What alternatives are there?

Some requirements for me:

* WYSIWIG editor * Tutorials * Infinite canvas/Path editing

  • by confounded on 10/28/17, 9:48 PM

    https://slides.com/

    Is a commercial SaaS GUI for reveal.js: http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/

    I’m a paying customer, and find it useful. Where possible, I create slides using standard open source reveal.js (or often some markdown format that compiles to it) but sometimes I’ll want to do something that’s easier with a GUI, or just run out of time/interest for design-from-the-command-line.

    It’s easy to export decks to HTML, and the auto-generated code is pretty clean and sane, as these things go.

    Additionally, the CEO of the company is the maintainer of reveal.js, so buying the product saustains his work in the open source library. You can also write to him with bugs and requests, he’s keen to listen and responsive. Thanks, Hakim!

  • by veli_joza on 10/29/17, 12:02 AM

    Is anyone thinking beyond slides? We need to demand more from our presentational tools. I'd like to have these features:

    Interactive slide elements like simulations, parametrized graphs, shells for SSH and interpreted languages.

    Mobile interface served for audience so they can participate in quizzes, voting and interactive experiments.

    Branching flows of presentation, so you can dive into more details on one branch, or skim through it on other branch (without running through slides franticly).

    Free style presentation where some presenter zooms in and out of tree representation of our knowledge of the presentation subject.

    Support for separate presenter's user interface - presenter should be able to easily cue the laughing track, or theatrically raise music volume, or see audience feedback.

    Both Prezi and reveal.js and some other tools I've seen, add too much design fluff and fail to deliver any fresh approach. PowerPoint is stagnating for a looong while. Which is really the shame, because we could engage our audience so much better with right tools.

  • by danieldk on 10/28/17, 5:56 PM

    org-mode with beamer output. For me there are a couple of large benefits:

    - You can include LaTeX directly in documents and preview LaTeX inline in Emacs. This is not restricted to LaTeX math, but any kind of LaTeX environment. I often use this for including TikZ figures.

    - You can include snippets of code in your document, execute them inline and include the results in your presentation. For instance, you can use this to include graphs using gnuplot, R, or matplotlib. Moreover, you can use tables org-mode tables as input to these code fragments.

    - You can use tags for headers/slides. I often use this to generate two different slide decks: one that I put on the website before the lecture and a second one with solutions for me to use during the lecture.

    - org-mode is a markup language that is similar to Markdown, so it is generally less work to write than LaTeX.

    - Like LaTeX and Markdown, you can put everything under version control.

  • by hayksaakian on 10/28/17, 5:00 PM

    Google slides is pretty good and free, I'm surprised nobody mentioned it already

  • by Jarwain on 10/28/17, 7:01 PM

    After some googling, I found out how one can enable Prezi classic on an account that only has Prezi Next.

    Make sure you're logged into your Prezi account, then go to this link: https://prezi.com/instant-prezi An editor or a 404 page may appear. Either way, Prezi classic is now enabled. You can access your dashboard again on the top right and switch between the two products in a drop down on the left.

    Source: https://prezibase.com/activate-prezi-classic-account/

  • by marcolussetti on 10/28/17, 4:38 PM

    If you're demonstrating any code, I find RISE to be magnificent. It's a plugin for Jupyter Notebooks that lets you present your code via reveal.js

    Project: https://github.com/damianavila/RISE Original demo at PyCon: https://youtu.be/rBS6hmiK-H8

  • by minimaxir on 10/28/17, 6:57 PM

    Keynote for iCloud (the web-based version of iWork's Keynote) has close-to-feature-parity with the macOS/iOS versions.

    Additionally, Keynote Live allows you to play a presentation and have viewers join via a URL, where they can view the presentation in sync on any device (macOS/iOS/Web), with feature parity to normal Keynote presentations.

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206205

  • by massaman_yams on 10/28/17, 3:36 PM

    I don't know if this satisfies your infinite canvas requirement, but I've used https://slides.com/ quite a bit. Similar to reveal.js.

    edit: as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, "slides.com is a front-end for reveal.js, made by the authors of reveal."

  • by Jaepa on 10/28/17, 4:06 PM

    Spectacle is pretty nice. Supports 3rd party extensions. Supports markdown. Split presenter and presentation views. Themes.

    https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle

  • by LarryMade2 on 10/28/17, 3:15 PM

    How about Sozi? its an extension for inkscape - http://sozi.baierouge.fr/

  • by constexpr on 10/28/17, 5:12 PM

    Figma (https://www.figma.com) is probably a perfect fit for your use case. It's an interface design tool but it can also be used for presentations. Benefits:

    * Free for individual use

    * Completely cross-platform (browser-based)

    * Has an infinite canvas

    * Has advanced path editing

    * Has a presentation mode for slides (the play button)

    * Supports simultaneous real-time editing if you need to work with someone else

  • by Ruud-v-A on 10/28/17, 6:41 PM

    While it does not solve your use case, others here might find it interesting: I built a domain-specific language for designing slides (https://github.com/ruuda/pris#readme). It is superficially similar to LaTeX/Beamer/TikZ, but it has first-class graphics that are reusable. More motivation in this blog post: https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2017/04/27/a-language-for-desig.... It is still basic, but I have used it a few times to do slides nonetheless.

  • by sridvijay on 10/28/17, 3:32 PM

    I remember seeing this on product hunt a while back and it looks awesome: https://ludus.one/?ref=producthunt

  • by josephernest on 10/28/17, 3:46 PM

    BigPicture might be what you're looking for: http://bigpicture.bi/demo

    * Infinite canvas

    * Infinite zooming

    * WYSIWIG

    * Demo

    * Opensource: https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js

    If you zoom on some vegetables here http://bigpicture.bi/Legumes you'll find the recipe :)

  • by twiss on 10/28/17, 3:40 PM

    There's Strut, which is WYSIWIG and has path editing: http://strut.io/

    I'm running a fork with some very minor improvements at https://www.airbornos.com/demo#open=strut. If you make an account there, they're saved in the cloud.

  • by ron07 on 10/29/17, 9:09 AM

    If you want LaTex, then take a look at this tool @ LucidChart LaTex support- https://store.office.com/en-ca/app.aspx?assetid=WA104380118&... - Word (free & paid) Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and easy. Easily create and insert flowcharts and other diagrams in Office documents. One of the supported “chart types” is LaTex equations.

    I've only played with it a little and was really impressed.

    I've been reading about Tableau, have not tried it http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/tableau/

    How about Sway? It is still very much in development. And the last I heard it has one serious shortcoming. The sway files must stay on the internet,no downloading. (that may have been fixed ...?)

    Office Sway is a presentation program and is part of the Microsoft Office family of products. Generally released by Microsoft in August 2015, Sway allows users who have a Microsoft account to combine text and media to create a presentable website. Users can pull content locally from the device in use, or from internet sources such as Bing, Facebook, OneDrive, and YouTube. More at "Wikipedia"

    Take a look at Ellen Finkelsteins site. She does some amazing stuff with PowerPoint http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/ - Ellen Finkelstein is a PowerPoint MVP

    http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Hidden_pivots.html

  • by jd3 on 10/28/17, 4:17 PM

  • by redmattred on 10/28/17, 4:06 PM

    Overhead projector + transparencies

  • by OJFord on 10/28/17, 4:28 PM

    \latex with beamer.

  • by inamberclad on 10/28/17, 4:18 PM

    No one has mentioned LibreOffice?

  • by ron07 on 10/29/17, 9:36 AM

    Have you looked at MS Mix? https://mix.office.com/en-us/Home

    Since you talk about teaching, are you aware of the MS Education offering? It includes subsites specific for teachers. That would be a good place to ask your question

    OFFICE 365 EDUCATION / STUDENT ADVANTAGE - LEARN https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education This is home site for ongoing contact/training/features of Office 365 Education for: • School leaders • Educators • Students • Products • Training & Events • Stories • How to Buy

    https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-educatio... - Home Page / FAQ Check if you can get Microsoft Office for free by trying out your valid school email address at the Office for Students page. https://products.office.com/en-us/academic/office-365-educat... – Describes the Education plan and how to get it https://products.office.com/en-us/academic/office-365-educat... - Home page

  • by BeetleB on 10/28/17, 4:35 PM

    Org Mode + Beamer (a LaTeX package).

    Although personally, these days I tend to use Reveal (using org-reveal).

  • by cher14 on 10/28/17, 6:29 PM

    Hope you take a look at https://www.breakdown-notes.com

    It has a pretty big map (though not infinite) for you to add shapes and text to, has support for adding and editing paths, plenty of tutorials and you can make slides in the paid version (free 2 week trial). Disclaimer: I made Breakdown Notes

  • by vram22 on 10/28/17, 9:01 PM

    As others have said in this thread, reveal.js is good. I've used it via slides.com where I put an overview presentation about my xtopdf Python toolkit for PDF generation from other formats:

    http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf

    S5 by Eric Meyer is good too - web-based, uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript:

    https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

    Online S5 intro / demo using S5 itself:

    https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html

    Edit:

    Sorry, missed seeing your requirements for the tool, not sure if S5 has them, but leaving my comment up since I think S5 is interesting and definitely a presentation tool.

  • by duality on 10/28/17, 5:02 PM

  • by geraldbauer on 10/28/17, 4:58 PM

    I've put together Slide Show (S9) [1] that lets you use plain text with markdown formatting convetions for putting together your slides / talks. Incl. a starter tutorial / repo. For infinite canvas (prezi-style) you can use the impress.js theme/template pack [2], for example. For wysiwig use your (visual) markdown editor of choice :-)

    [1] http://slideshow-s9.github.io [2] https://github.com/slideshow-templates/slideshow-impress.js

  • by andrepd on 10/28/17, 11:38 PM

    If you're familiar with LaTeX, Beamer is an option for scientific/math slides.

  • by ron07 on 10/29/17, 9:42 AM

    Some more ideas: POWER-USER – EURO 200 (FREE TRIAL) https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/ With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process of creating a presentation. With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process of creating a presentation.

  • by burnerOh2125 on 10/29/17, 5:14 PM

    Here's a radical thought: don't use a presentation deck! Hand out a collection of images, printed or via pdf file, give the student a couple of minutes to quickly become familiar with it, then just talk about each of the major figure in the handout. This was my solution to 'powerpoint hell' when sharing results in grad school, I don't know if it really applies to your case (non-expert students), but it may be worth a shot. Hell, its better than reading off slides! Good luck!

  • by dahart on 10/28/17, 10:11 PM

    Lucidchart has a slides/presentation mode, along with mind maps, a wysiwig editor, tutorials, and an infinite canvas.

    (Disclaimer, I used to work there, and helped build the presentation mode.)

  • by jMyles on 10/28/17, 4:36 PM

    I want to suggest that WYSIWYG is a really bad formula for presentations.

    For my part, I really like Hovercraft (makes impress.js using RST): https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft

    If all you are looking for out of WYSIWYG is ease, then I think something like this is just as easy.

  • by rnhmjoj on 10/28/17, 3:39 PM

  • by atsaloli on 10/29/17, 9:34 PM

    I just started using GitPitch.com which is backed by reveal.js It integrates seemlessly with GitHub, GitLab, etc. Feed it markdown and graphics and it produces beautiful slideshows. The author is incredibly responsive (I just commented on a feature I needed and it was done in < 12 hours and done right). Freakin' amazing!

  • by 1337biz on 10/28/17, 7:04 PM

    I work in Powerpointing and even Prezi is just too obscure for most of our clients. Nobody wants to learn a new tool or download anything just because the new tool has a few silly layout improvements. But if you don't need others to work with it, it probably doesn't really matter.

  • by wannacry2017 on 10/30/17, 2:34 PM

    I recently discovered Vizzlo (https://vizzlo.com). Those guys are going to develop smart templates for all common concept charts. Pretty fast, pretty slick. Basically, the opposite of Prezi but worth a trial.

  • by eminetto on 10/28/17, 8:58 PM

    Deckset is awesome. Markdown is easy to write and Deckset can export to PDF. It’s my choice nowadays

  • by seltzered_ on 10/28/17, 6:10 PM

    https://infinitekind.com/syncspace is an infinite canvas app, though I’m not sure how well it works for sharing/teaching usecases

  • by senko on 10/28/17, 6:25 PM

    Crosses some reqs (tho doesn't have full features object editing), handy if you want interactive presentations https://awwapp.com/

  • by f_allwein on 10/28/17, 11:46 PM

    Take a look at https://www.mindmeister.com - it is mainly for mind maps (and is very good at that), but also has a presentation mode.

  • by twovi on 10/28/17, 4:07 PM

    I use Marp, quick and dirty. But it allows for Markdown to PDF presentations.

  • by vfulco on 10/29/17, 1:39 AM

    Reveal.js used with R's version of markdown makes for a really nice setup. Fully contained html if you want, online/offline. Lot of support from community and slick features.

  • by jgent on 11/3/17, 4:17 PM

    https://tiled.co

    We've built Tiled to be a versatile presentation tool with a focus on interactivity and analytics.

  • by llacb47 on 10/28/17, 4:46 PM

    Open source JSON editor: https://github.com/tantaman/Strut

  • by gjayakrishnan on 10/29/17, 9:36 AM

  • by analog31 on 10/28/17, 6:23 PM

    A jupyter to power point converter would be huge. I work in a typical organization where power point is expected, but my results come out of jupyter.

  • by orliesaurus on 10/28/17, 5:26 PM

    Can someone care to explain what infinite canvas means

  • by jasonlotito on 10/29/17, 12:01 AM

    PowerPoint can still replicate a lot of what you are looking for. Look into Morph. Granted, I prefer Keynote and Magic Move for this.

  • by vinch on 10/29/17, 11:04 AM

    You should give a try to Ludus --> https://ludus.one

  • by JoBrad on 10/28/17, 4:13 PM

    Sway is good. Very different than PowerPoint.

    https://sway.com/

  • by Dowwie on 10/28/17, 7:56 PM

    just created an awesome repo for presentation libraries as there doesn't seem to be one yet: https://github.com/Dowwie/awesome-presentation-libs

  • by kim0 on 10/28/17, 4:44 PM

    reveal-md if you like markdown!

  • by nrjames on 10/28/17, 4:39 PM

    I think you can make presentations with Omnigraffle, which has an infinite canvas.

  • by aquamo on 10/28/17, 7:53 PM

    Emacs org-mode w/Beamer or reveal.js export.

  • by probinso on 10/28/17, 11:50 PM

    beamer, marp

  • by mankash666 on 10/28/17, 5:13 PM

    Reveal-MD: write in markdown, compile/output a good looking reveal-js HTML presentation.

    Demo: https://mankash.bitbucket.io Reveal-MD source: https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md

  • by Numberwang on 10/28/17, 3:25 PM

    reveal.js wins every time.