computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

package used to display information in the form of a

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

. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a method for inserting and manipulating graphic images and

media clip Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...

s * a slide-show system to display the content Presentation software can be viewed as enabling a functionally-specific category of

electronic media Electronic media are media that use electronics or electromechanical means for the audience to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which today are most often created digitally, but do not require el ...

, with its own distinct culture and practices as compared to traditional presentation media (such as blackboards,

whiteboard A whiteboard (also known by the terms marker board, dry-erase board, dry-wipe board, and pen-board) is a glossy, usually white surface for making non-permanent markings. Whiteboards are analogous to blackboards, but with a smoother surface all ...

s and

flip chart A flip chart is a stationery item consisting of a pad of large paper sheets. It is typically fixed to the upper edge of a whiteboard, or supported on a tripod or four-legged easel. Such charts are commonly used for presentation A presentatio ...

s).

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 ...

s in this mode of delivery have become pervasive in many aspects of

business communication Business communication is communication that is intended to help a business achieve a fundamental goal, through information sharing between employees as well as people outside the company. It includes the process of creating, sharing, listening, ...

, especially in

business planning Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit." Having a business name does not separat ...

, as well as in academic-conference and

professional conference A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

settings, and in the knowledge economy generally, where ideas are a primary work

output Output may refer to: * The information produced by a computer, see Input/output * An output state of a system, see state (computer science) * Output (economics), the amount of goods and services produced ** Gross output in economics, the value o ...

. Presentations may also feature prominently in political settings, especially in

workplace politics Workplace politics is the process and behavior that in human interactions involves power and authority. It is also a tool to assess the operational capacity and to balance diverse views of interested parties. It is also known as office politics and ...

, where persuasion is a central determinant of group outcomes. Most modern meeting-rooms and

conference hall A conference hall, conference room, or meeting room is a room provided for singular events such as business conferences and meetings. Room It is commonly found at large hotels and convention centers though many other establishments, including even ...

s are configured to include presentation electronics, such as

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 projec ...

s suitable for displaying

presentation slide A slide is a single page of a presentation. Collectively, a group of slides may be known as a slide deck. A slide show is an exposition of a series of slides or images in an electronic device or in a projection screen. Before the advent of the pe ...

s, often driven by the presenter's own laptop, under direct control of the presentation program used to develop the presentation. Often a presenter will present a lecture using the slides as a visual aid both for the presenter (to track the lecture's coverage) and for the audience (especially when an audience member mishears or misunderstands the verbal component). Generally in presentations, the visual material is considered supplemental to a strong aural presentation that accompanies the slide show, but in many cases, such as statistical graphics, it can be difficult to convey essential information other than by visual means; additionally, a well-designed

infographic Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes (2004). ''Public Relations Wr ...

can be extremely effective in a way that words are not. Endemic over-reliance on slides with low information density and with a poor accompanying lecture has given presentation software a negative reputation as sometimes functioning as a crutch for the poorly informed or the poorly prepared. Autographix, and Dicomed. It became quite easy to make last-minute changes compared to traditional typesetting and pasteup. It was also a lot easier to produce a large number of slides in a small amount of time. However, these workstations also required skilled operators, and a single workstation represented an investment of $50,000 to $200,000 (in 1979 dollars). In the mid-1980s developments in the world of computers changed the way presentations were created. Inexpensive, specialized applications now made it possible for anyone with a PC to create professional-looking presentation graphics. Originally these programs were used to generate 35 mm slides, to be presented using 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 hom ...

. As these programs became more common in the late 1980s several companies set up services that would accept the shows on

diskette A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

and create slides using a film recorder or print transparencies. In the 1990s dedicated LCD-based screens that could be placed on the projectors started to replace the transparencies, and by the early 2000s they had almost all been replaced by

video projector A video projector is an image projector that receives a video signal and projects the corresponding image on a projection screen using a lens system. Video projectors use a very bright ultra-high-performance lamp (a special mercury arc lamp), X ...

s. The first commercial computer software specifically intended for creating WYSIWYG presentations was developed at Hewlett Packard in 1979 and called

BRUNO Bruno may refer to: People and fictional characters *Bruno (name), including lists of people and fictional characters with either the given name or surname * Bruno, Duke of Saxony (died 880) * Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne, ...

and later HP-Draw. The first microcomputer-based presentation software was Cromemco's Slidemaster, developed by John F. Dunn and released by

Cromemco Cromemco was a Mountain View, California microcomputer company known for its high-end Z80-based S-100 bus computers and peripherals in the early days of the personal computer revolution. The company began as a partnership in 1974 between Harry ...

in 1981. The first software displaying a presentation on a personal computer screen was VCN ExecuVision, developed in 1982. This program allowed users to choose from a library of images to accompany the text of their presentation.

Harvard Graphics Harvard Graphics was a graphics and presentation program for IBM PC compatibles. The first version, titled Harvard Presentation Graphics was released for MS-DOS in 1986 by Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) and achieved a high market share. It w ...

was introduced for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

and

Lotus Freelance Graphics Lotus Freelance Graphics is an information graphics and presentation program developed by Lotus Software (formerly Lotus Development Corp.) following its acquisition of Graphic Communications Inc in 1986. It was first released for DOS and OS/2 op ...

was introduced for DOS and

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...

in 1986.

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 PowerPo ...

was introduced for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

computer in 1987.

Features

A presentation program is supposed to help both the speaker with an easier access to his ideas and the participants with visual information which complements the talk. There are many different types of presentations including professional (work-related), education, entertainment, and for general communication. Presentation programs can either supplement or replace the use of older visual-aid technology, such as pamphlets, handouts, chalkboards, flip charts, posters, slides and overhead transparencies. Text, graphics, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or "slides" or "foils". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the

, a device that has become somewhat obsolete due to the use of presentation software. Slides can be printed, or (more usually) displayed on-screen and navigated through at the command of the presenter. An entire presentation can be saved in video format. The slides can also be saved as images of any

image file formats An Image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be ...

for any future reference. Transitions between slides can be animated in a variety of ways, as can the emergence of elements on a slide itself. Typically a presentation has many constraints and the most important being the limited time to present consistent information. Many presentation programs come with pre-designed images (

clip art Clip art (also clipart, clip-art) is a type of graphic art. Pieces are pre-made images used to illustrate any medium. Today, clip art is used extensively and comes in many forms, both electronic and printed. However, most clip art today is creat ...

) and/or have the ability to import graphic images, such as Visio and

Edraw Max Edraw Max is a 2D business technical diagramming software which helps create flowcharts, organizational charts, mind map, network diagrams, floor plans, workflow diagrams, business charts, and engineering diagrams. The current version, Edraw ...

. Some tools also have the ability to search and import images from

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

directly from the tool. Custom graphics can also be created in other programs such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP and then exported. The concept of

originated with the image library that came as a complement with VCN ExecuVision, beginning in 1983. With the growth of

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image ...

and

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

, many programs that handle these types of media also include presentation functions for displaying them in a similar "slide show" format, for example

iPhoto iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...

. These programs allow groups of digital photos to be displayed in a slide show with options such as selecting transitions, choosing whether or not the show stops at the end or continues to loop, and including music to accompany the photos. Similar to programming extensions for an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

, "add ons" or plugins for presentation programs can be used to enhance their capabilities. Apps can enable a smartphone to be a remote control for slideshow presentations, including slide previews, speaker notes, timer, stop watch, pointer, going directly to a given slide, blank screen and more. Presentation programs also offer an interactive integrated hardware element designed to engage an audience (e.g.

audience response systems Audience response is a type of interaction associated with the use of audience response systems, to create interactivity between a presenter and its audience. Systems for co-located audiences combine wireless hardware with presentation software, a ...

second screen A second screen involves the use of a computing device (commonly a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet) to provide an enhanced viewing experience for content on another device, such as a television. In particular, the term commonly refer ...

applications) or facilitate presentations across different geographical locations through the internet (e.g.

web conferencing Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

). Hardware devices such as

laser pointer A laser pointer or laser pen is a small handheld device with a power source (usually a battery) and a laser diode emitting a very narrow coherent low-powered laser beam of visible light, intended to be used to highlight something of interest by ...

s and

interactive whiteboard An interactive whiteboard (IWB), also known as interactive board or smart board, is a large interactive display board in the form factor of a whiteboard. It can either be a standalone touchscreen computer used independently to perform task ...

s can ease the job of a live presenter .

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Presentation Program

Features

See also

References

Further reading

External links