[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-02| e1 # A Slideous Show

I was using Eric Meyer's simple slide show system S5 for over more than a year in some of my lectures and most of my talks. To have one document for the web, for presentation and for print is great.

Since I never seriously used those highly sophisticated presentation tools that come with nearly every office software package out there, I was perfectly happy with S5.

Then, several weeks ago, I stumpled over Dave Raggett's Html Slidy and after a short inspection I even liked it more.

After using Html Slidy for a while I tried to customise and extend it. In fact I wanted …

  • manual instead of automatical font resizing.
  • capability to select content during presentation and using the mouse for single-click navigation.
  • automatical generation of a Table of Content inside of a specific slide.
  • one-click completion of incremental slides.
  • menu buttons in the statusbar.
  • easy configuration and customization of behaviour and statusbar.

Patching Html Slidy turned out to be a surprisingly hard task for me, so I finally decided to write yet another script for controlling a slide show.

To get a first impression of Slideous you may want to start this presentation.

You can download the files here.

I have tested Slideous with

  • Mozilla Firefox 1.5
  • Internet Explorer 6.0
  • Opera 8.5

Please note, that Slideous hasn't yet implemented those cool features …

  • different backgrounds for individual slides (Html Slidy).
  • semivisible / highlighted incremental items (S5).

Update

Slideous is now based on valid HTML markup and CSS. You can test it here.

 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-03| e2 # Slideous is ...

  • a web based presentation application.
  • based on (X)HTML, CSS and Javascript
  • easily customisable.
  • lightweight.
  • inspired by S5 and Html Slidy.
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-03| e3 # Navigating Slideous

Full screen
F11 key
Next Slide
Page down key, Return key
Previous Slide
Page up key
Next Item
Single mouse click, Right Arrow key, Space bar
Previous Item
Left Arrow key
First Slide
Home key
Last Slide
End key
Font size
Use +/- key to increase/decrease font size
Miscellaneous
C-key: navigates to Table of Content
M-key: Mouse navigation on/off
P-key: Print mode / Show all Slides
S-key: Statusbar on/off
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-10| e4 # Mouse Navigation

Slide navigation via mouse click can be enabled/disabled temporarily with the M-key and permanently by setting the {$mousesensible} variable. (See Configuration variables).

In order to allow selecting content during the presentation, please note some special aspects with Slideous' mouse navigation:

  • If the cursor position when pressing the mouse button differs from its position when releasing the button, you might have selected some content and no navigation is performed.
  • If the cursor position on button press and release is unchanged and some content was selected, the content is deselected and no navigation is performed.
  • If the cursor position on button press and release is unchanged and no content was selected, a navigation to the next item/slide is performed.
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-05| e5 # Incremental Display

Slides can be defined to use incremental display in three different ways

  • setting the class attribute "incremental" for the elements

blockquote, dd, dt, h1 - h6, li, p, pre, img, object, table, td, th, tr

  • setting the class attribute "incremental" for any container element to affect its immediate child elements above.
  • setting the {$autoincrement} variable locally or globally to true affects the elements

dl, ol, ul

You can modify the element lists above in the configuration section of slideous.js.

To see an example press Space Bar to proceed to next slide.

 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-10| e6 # Incremental Display - Example

Slideous uses …

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript

The first two acronyms mean;HTML: Hypertext Markup Language;CSS: Cascading Style Sheets The keystroke navigation follows the rules

Navigation Keycurrent slide is completecurrent slide is incomplete
Tab, Right Arrow next slide next item
Page Down next slide show current slide completely

Incremental display with images behaves as expected

PenroseRealSml.gif Penrose4RealRotSml.gif Penrose5RealSml.gif

Penrose models from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, with permission.
Thanks to (c) Gershon Elber for the graphics.

See handout for slide source (P-key).

<p>Slideous uses ...</p>
<ul class="incremental">
  <li class="u">HTML</li>
  <li class="u">CSS</li>
  <li class="u">Javascript</li>
</ul>
<p class="incremental">The first two acronyms mean</p>
<dl class="incremental">
  <dt>HTML</dt><dd>Hypertext Markup Language</dd>
  <dt>CSS</dt><dd>Cascading Style Sheets</dd>
</dl>
<p class="incremental">The keystroke navigation follows the rules</p>
<div style="text-align:center;">
  <table class="incremental">
    <tr class="evn">
      <td><strong>Navigation Key</strong></td>
      <td><strong>current slide is complete</strong></td>
      <td><strong>current slide is incomplete</strong></td>
    </tr>
    <tr class="odd">
      <td class="lft">Tab, Right Arrow </td>
      <td class="lft">next slide </td><td class="lft">next item </td>
    </tr>
    <tr class="evn incremental">
      <td class="lft">Page Down </td>
      <td class="lft">next slide </td>
      <td class="lft">show current slide completely </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>
<p class="incremental">Incremental display with images behaves as expected</p>
<div class="incremental" style="text-align:center;">
  <img src="PenroseRealSml.gif" alt="Triangle"/> 
  <img src="Penrose4RealRotSml.gif" alt="Square"/> 
  <img src="Penrose5RealSml.gif" alt="Pentagon"/>
</div>
<p class="incremental" style="text-align:center;font-size:75%;">
  Penrose models from [...]
</p>
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-03| e7 # Create a Slideous Show

  • Create a single HTML or XHTML file using the template below.
  • Reference the slideous.css and slideous.js files properly.
  • Append an arbitrary number of <div>'s for each slide.
  • Insert a <h1> heading and additional arbitrary HTML markup into every slide section. …

Template

<html>
  <head>
    <title>A Slideous Show</title> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="slideous.css" /> 
    <script src="slideous.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> 
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="statusbar">
      <!-- statusbar content -->   
    </div>
    <div class="slide">
      <h1>First Slide</h1>
      <!-- slide content -->
   </div>
   <!-- more slides -->   
  </body>
</html>
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-04| e8 # Customising Slideous

You can customise Slideous in several different ways.

  1. globally by
    • creating your individual HTML template file.
    • modifying/extending the minimal CSS file slideous.css. Please note, that it includes two sections:
      • @media screen, projection
      • @media print
    • modifying the configuration section of the script file slideous.js.
  2. locally by
    • adding meta elements to the template's <head> section.
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-04| e9 # Configuration variables

Wherever the string {$name} appears in the rest of the document, it is substituted by the corresponding [value] of an existing local or global variable with that name.

  • Global variables are defined as static javascript variables of the form Slideous.varname.
  • Local variables are declared by a set of <meta> elements as name/value pairs.
<meta name="[name]" content="[value]" />

Local variables defined by <meta> elements are of higher priority and thus overwrite global script variables.

 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-04| e10 # Configuration example

The following example illustrates the usage of configuration variables:

slideous.js

  var Slideous = {
     ...
     company: "Virtual Inc.",
     ...
  };

html file

  ...
  <title>Slide Show</title>
  <meta name="author" content="Jon Doe" /> 
  <meta name="date" content="2005-11-04" /> 
  ...
  <div class="slide">
     <h1>{$title}</h1>
     <h3>{$author}, {$company}</h3>
     <h4>{$date}</h4>
  </div>
  ...

is resulting in …

  ...
  <div class="slide">
     <h1>Slide Show</h1>
     <h3>Jon Doe, Virtual Inc.</h3>
     <h4>2005-11-04</h4>
  </div>
  ...
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-04| e11 # Predefined Variables

With Slideous comes a set of predefined variables, some of which you might use or change to another value within your presentation. Please note, that you are not restricted to them. In fact you can define arbitrary additional variables.

variable type meta js description
$autoincrement boolean yes yes when true, use incremental display for certain elements, even when not set via class-attribute
$fontsize number yes yes initial font-size (percent)
$fontdelta number yes yes value for increment/decrement font-size (percent)
$mousesensitive boolean yes yes enable forward navigation via mouse click
$generator string no no "Slideous"
$slidecount number no no number of slides
$statusbar boolean yes yes visibility of statusbar
$title string no no presentation title, taken from the documents <title> element
$tocid string yes yes add automatically created table of contents to container element with this id-attribute. Use "" to suppress a ToC.
$version string no no Version of Slideous
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-04| e12 # Statusbar

statusbar

Slideous comes with a simple predefined status bar. It is visible in single slide mode only, always located at the bottom of the browser window.

The statusbar code reads:

  <div id="statusbar">
    <span style="float:right;">
      <button id="contentbutton" title="content">C</button>
      <button id="homebutton" title="first slide">1</button>
      <button id="prevslidebutton" title="previous slide">&laquo;</button>
      <button id="previtembutton" title="previous item">&lsaquo;</button>
      <button id="nextitembutton" title="next item">&rsaquo;</button>
      <button id="nextslidebutton" title="next slide">&raquo;</button>
      <button id="endbutton" title="last slide">{$slidecount}</button>
      <button id="incfontbutton" title="content">A+</button>
      <button id="decfontbutton" title="first slide">A-</button>
    </span>
    <span id="eos">&frac12;</span>
    <span title="{$location}, {$date}">{$title}, {$author}</span>
    <span style="position:absolute;left:45%;">
      <span id="slideidx"></span> of {$slidecount}
    </span>
  </div>

Feel free to design your own statusbar.

  • There are two elements with special meaning. Slideous identifies them by their id-attributes.
    1. The current slide index is automatically injected into an element with id="slideidx", whenever the slide is changing. (see 2 of 7 in the above example statusbar).
    2. When the current slide is incomplete, i.e. there are still some invisible items available for incremental display, then an element with (xml)id="eos" is shown; otherwise hidden. (see ½ in the above statusbar)).
  • When using pretty images as navigation buttons, be aware to add the corresponding id-attributes to them.
 

[edit] [comment] [remove] |2005-11-11| e13 # Miscellaneous

Table of Contents

It is easy to let Slideous automatically create a ToC. Simply set the value of $tocid to the id-attribute of an empty container element anywhere in your document. Slideous will insert a ToC item for each slide at startup. The ToC item's markup is defined by variable Slideous.tocitem. With that you can either create an unordered list of links in a ToC slide or build a drop down list in the status bar.

Print a Handout

  • Add <div class="handout">...</div> sections for additional content visible only in the handout document.
  • Eventually customise the @media print section in slideous.css.
  • Change the View to Print View (P-key).
  • Use the browsers Print or Print Preview command to send the document to the your printer.

See the print result of this presentation here.

Internal Links

Use the markup <a href="#s[index]">...</a>" for linking from one slide to another. Please note, that the browsers back button does not work as expected with internal slide links. In contrast to that external links do work as expected.

The Slideous Files

Get them here.

Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Eric Meyer and Dave Raggett for their useful and inspiring work.

License

This work is licensed under Creative Commons GNU LGPL License.

Contact

If you want to ask a question, give suggestions or simply have some comments please send them to my weblog or contact me directly under mailto:stefan@goessner.net.