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

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!

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.

- 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.

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/

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

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

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

https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle

* 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

* 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 :)

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

https://sway.com/

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