Putting Your Content on a Diet

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Putting Your Content on a Diet

• Using rich online media without download woes

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Overview
This presentation will focus on methods to make
slide presentations and other complex documents
available to students for web download without
huge wait times or other problems. We will see
various file-size reduction techniques, as well
as suggestions for alternative formats.
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Distributing Presentations

• Making native format (PPT) available requires
  users to have special software
• May not work on all platforms (Mac!)
• Accessibility issues
• PPT needs to be downloaded entirely before first
  slide can be viewed
• Web version or PDF format can display first slide
  right away

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Converting PPT to web format

• Need to choose to publish for all browsers!
• Different quality and functionality with
  different browsers
• IE uses PPT ActiveX engine internally, thus
  offers rich functionality (Windows only)
• Embedded media (e.g. Flash) wont work except in
  IE
• Huge accessibility issues with PPT2000/XP

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Converting PPT to PDF

• Need to install Acrobat after Office!
• get PDFmaker macro (button on toolbar)
• Converts in one step, but takes its time
• May have trouble with very large PPT files
• PDF file needs to be opened in Acrobat rotate
  all pages 90º clockwise
• Set open option to Full Screen

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PDF presentations

• Will advance on mouse-click only if this viewer
  preference is set, otherwise use PgDn
• Will preserve slide transitions, but not builds
• For builds, will create one PDF slide per step
• Will preserve hyperlinks on slides, but not
  embedded media
• Take a little longer than PPT to draw objects

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Printing Slide Presentations

• PDF presentations can only be printed as full
  slides (unless printer does 2-up, 4-up)
• But can be print-disabled to save tonertrees
• PPT offers full range of print options, but
  students often print full slides
• Make PDF of handouts or Notes pages
• If text-rich presentation, offer outline as PDF

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Image-rich Presentations

• as used in Architecture, Art History, Medicine,
  Biology, Geology, etc.

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Problem scanned photographs

• While line graphics and clipart do not contribute
  significantly to PPT filesize, lots of
  photographs can quickly make huge files
• File format JPEG vs. TIFF/BMP (big!!!)
• Scan resolution too high huge files
• Purpose is screen display (96 or 72 pixels)
• PowerPoint lets you resize images, but

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Photographs

• All image edits in PPT are reversible
• PPT will contain original inserted image data
• Resize large photos in a photo editor (e.g.
  Photoshop) before inserting them into PPT

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Solution PDF conversion

• Ideal for photo-rich PPTs
• Sample Argentina photo tour (14MB)Improved
  version (8MB) Even better (1.3MB)
• PDF version (231KB)
• Web version (made with PPT97) (153KB)
• Web version for IE (PPT2000) (14MB)
• Web version for Netscape (PPT2000) (212 KB)

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Media-rich presentations

• Sounds, Video, Animations

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Audio and Video

• PowerPoint is Presentation software
• Its rich media capabilities are intended for
  local playback to a room audience
• It is not optimized for Internet delivery
• Audio narration and sounds will be embedded into
  PPT file, creating huge files
• Video will be linked, thus has to stay in same
  folder as PPT file itself

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Audio and Video Options

• To avoid long wait times for download, audio and
  video should be streamed when delivered over the
  network
• To use streaming media in your slide
  presentations, best to just put a link/button on
  a slide that will launch standalone player
• Can then switch player to full-screen mode
• Play sample video
• Hyperlinks still work after web conversion!

Play sample sound
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Audio and Video Web Delivery

• For Internet presentations with audio/video, use
  special narration software
• impatica
• PresenterONE
• RealPresenter
• ShowAndTell
• Visual Communicator

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Distributing Documents

• Text and Images

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Scanned Sources

• Scanning records pixel data, not text
• Must do OCR (optical character recognition) to
  get text searchable, convertible, accessible
• Ideal Omnipage 12 or 11 to PDF formatpreserves
  layout, looks good, searchable
• But complex layouts (columns) not accessible
• Need tagged PDF (Make-Accessible plugin)

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Other documents

• If elaborate layouts, tables, images PDF
• Else best to convert to HTML for wide
  availability and easy access without additional
  software or performance problems
• Easy to do in word processors etc.
• Use MS Office HTML filter for cleanup of
  Office2000/XP junk XML
• Or use DreamWeaver