A slide is a single page of a

presentation A presentation conveys information from a speaker to an audience. Presentations are typically demonstrations, introduction, lecture, or speech meant to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new idea/product. Presenta ...

. Collectively, a group of slides may be known as a slide deck. A

slide show A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images (Presentation slide, slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals o ...

is an exposition of a series of slides or images in an electronic device or in a projection screen. Before the advent of the

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

, a presentation slide could be a 35 mm slide viewed with a

slide projector A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides. 35 mm slide projectors, direct descendants of the larger-format magic lantern, first came into widespread use during the 1950s as a form of occasional home ...

or a transparency viewed with an

overhead projector An overhead projector (often abbreviated to OHP), like a film or slide projector, uses light to project an enlarged image on a screen, allowing the view of a small document or picture to be shared with a large audience. In the overhead project ...

. In the

digital age The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during t ...

, a slide most commonly refers to a single page developed using a

presentation program A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a ...

such as

MS PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

Apple Keynote Keynote is a presentation program, presentation software application developed as a part of the iWork productivity suite by Apple Inc. Version 10 of Keynote for Mac, the latest major update, was released in March 2020. On January 27, 2010, Appl ...

Google Slides Google Slides is a presentation program included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service also includes: Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Goog ...

Apache OpenOffice Apache OpenOffice (AOO) is an open-source office productivity software suite. It is one of the successor projects of OpenOffice.org and the designated successor of IBM Lotus Symphony. It is a close cousin of LibreOffice, Collabora Online and N ...

LibreOffice LibreOffice () is a free and open-source productivity software, office productivity software suite, a project of The Document Foundation (TDF). It was fork (software development), forked in 2010 from OpenOffice.org, an open-sourced version of t ...

. It is also possible to create them with a

document markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the documen ...

, for instance with the

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

class Beamer.

Lecture A lecture (from Latin ''lēctūra'' “reading” ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical inform ...

notes Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to: Music and entertainment * Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music * Notes (album), ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian * ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) sho ...

in slide format are referred to as lecture slides, frequently downloadable by students in

.ppt Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired Power ...

.pdf Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

format.

Slide producing software

Presentation slides can be created in many pieces of software such as

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

Impress,

Prezi Prezi is a Hungarian video and visual communications software company founded in 2009 in Hungary, with offices in San Francisco, Budapest and Riga as of 2020. According to Prezi, in 2021, the software company has more than 100 million users wor ...

, ClearSlide, Powtoon,

GoAnimate Vyond (formerly known as GoAnimate until 2018; stylized as ''Go!Animate'' until 2013) is an American cloud-based animated video creation platform. History Vyond was founded as GoAnimate in 2007 by Alvin Hung, and the first version of GoAnimat ...

Snagit Snagit (formerly SnagIt) is screen capture and screen recording software for Windows and macOS. It is created and developed by TechSmith and was first launched in 1990. Snagit is available in English, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spa ...

Camtasia Camtasia (; formerly Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac) is a software suite, created and published by TechSmith, for creating and recording video tutorials and presentations via screencast (screen recording), or via a direct recording plug-in ...

CamStudio CamStudio is an open-source screencasting program for Microsoft Windows released as free software. The software renders videos in an AVI format. It can also convert these AVIs into Flash Video format, embedded in SWF files. CamStudio is w ...

SlideShare SlideShare is an American hosting service, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. ...

, and

Reallusion Reallusion is a 2D and 3D character creation and animation software developer with tools from cartoon characters to digital humans and animation pipelines for films, real-time engines, video games, virtual production, archvis. The character ...

. Some software, like competitors PowToon and

Vyond Vyond (formerly known as GoAnimate until 2018; stylized as ''Go!Animate'' until 2013) is an American cloud-based animated video creation platform. History Vyond was founded as GoAnimate in 2007 by Alvin Hung, and the first version of GoAnima ...

, produces slides with more animation. Others like

can be used to record the screen activity. The most popular pieces of slide producing software are

and ClearSlide. *

PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

is currently the most popular slides presentation program.

Impress is a FOSS alternative. *

was developed in 2009 by

Peter Arvai ''The native Hungarian form of this personal name is Árvai Péter. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.'' Peter Arvai (born October 26, 1979) is a Hungarian/ Swedish entrepreneur and activist. He is the Executive Ch ...

, Peter Halácsy and Ádám Somlai-Fischer in Budapest and San Francisco. Today, Prezi has 40 million users internationally. *

, updated for

OS X El Capitan OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Following ...

, works on Macs and some other Apple devices. * ClearSlide is commonly used in marketing and sales organizations for presentations to customers. *

was developed by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

at the same time as Google Docs and Sheets, in 2007. The tool allows live collaboration.

Templates

Typically in a set of slides (a "deck"), all the slides will have a similar layout template, controlling such factors as margins and headings.

Slide sharing websites

Some websites offer facilities to share slide presentations online.

Selection of slide sharing websites

allows the user to share presentations publicly or privately. Slides can be uploaded in various ways, via email and through social media are the most common ways of sharing the slides. AuthorSTREAM only allows the user to upload PowerPoint presentation slides. On this website users can give feedback by rating presentations and posting comments. SlideBoom turns slide presentations into

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia Computing platform, software platform used for production of Flash animation, animations, rich web applications, application software, desktop applications, mobile apps, mo ...

so they can be viewed without slide presentation software. SlideOnline allows the user to upload PowerPoint presentations and share them as a web page in any device or to embed them in

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

as part of the posts comments. Another way of sharing slides is by turning them into a video. PowerPoint allows users to export a presentation to video (.mp4 or .wmv).

References

{{Presentation software Presentation

Slide producing software

Templates

Slide sharing websites

Selection of slide sharing websites

See also

References