The other day Jon Udell wrote about HTML
Slidy, a javascript library that
allows you to make presentations using HTML conforming to a sort of
microformat. I have spent a few hours working out how to add Slidy to
the ICEcontent management system. This means I
can write a document in my word processor, sprinkle it with slides,
click a button to blog it, another button to make a presentation and one
more button to make a PDF version.
More on how I did this below, with links to the results, but first some
background, sprinkled with Slidy slides. If you're viewing this via the
atom feed then you'll need to come to the website to see the slides.
You'll recognize them 'cos they have my usual top-notch
finger-down-the-throat graphic design.
Jon Udell on Slidy
Jon
says:
Given my skills and inclinations, it’s no surprise that I’m an instant
convert. To use it, you create a single XHTML file that pulls in CSS
stylesheets and JavaScript code. Each slide’s content is wrapped in a
DIV tag decorated with a class attribute of “slide.” Folks like me,
who compose directly and easily in HTML, will love it.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/17/78280_21OPstrategic_1.html
Given my propensities, I was plotting to make ICE spit out Slidy
presentations as soon as I saw this. Later, there was a follow up from
Jon about some of the political aspects of presentations and the web.
This contained a call to action, to the effect that we should create
easy ways for people to publish presentations in a web friendly
format. So, I sprang into action. As springy as I get, anyway.
Jon Udell on the politics of presentation software
Jon Udell again – with emphasis by me.
That said, I'll argue that it's democratic, not elitist, to believe
that presentations ought to be first-class citizens of the web,
viewable by any standards-based browser with full interactive
fidelity. If we've failed to fully democratize the necessary
authoring software -- as, so far, we have -- then shame on us.
There's no longer any good reason why we couldn't make it easy for
people to create effective presentations through the web as well as
for the web, and there are plenty of good reasons why we could and
should.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/05/22.html#a1452
For our ICE users at USQ and beyond (numbering a couple of dozen and
growing) this new technique using ICE + Slidy will be an easy to use
avenue to create presentations. But more that that, it will allow a new
amalgam of presentation and document about which I'm very excited.
Courseware written using ICE is already sprinkled with little boxes
containing activities, readings and the like. I think there's great
potential for picking out key points, quotes and images and highlighting
them as slides. This will make the print and full-text versions a bit
livelier, and you'll get a presentation for nothing, without the hassles
of syncing between two different sources.
All this of course depends on the great work that Dave Raggett did on
Slidy. A real triumph. Thanks!
Here's how it works in my proof-of-concept implementation.
ICE + Slidy: how to use it
-
Use ICE as usual, using OpenOffice.lorg Writer or MS word and the
ICE template.
-
Use autotext to insert a slide in-text.
-
Fill out the slide (pictures, bullets, blockquotes, whatever you
like).
-
View your page through your ICE web site.
-
Click 'Slidy' to see the presentation.
-
Save the presentation from your browser.
Some background might help here: ICE runs on your computer as a little
web server that watches your files and converts them to HTML and PDF for
you. ICE is extensible, so it only took a few minutes to add the button
that says 'Slidy' to my ICE site.
ICE + Slidy: How it works
-
ICE now recognizes a one-column, two row table with a paragraph of
style 'h-slide' as a slide.
-
ICE turns slides into HTML
Slidy compatible divs.
-
ICE pages display as normal, with slides inline. You can use CSS to
format the slides.
-
A new button in ICE generates a document containing only your
slides, and applies an HTML Slidy template to it.
-
At this stage, you can save the resulting presentation from the
browser.
Now there's a number of things to do to get this into production.
Next Steps for ICE
To get ICE + Slidy out to the public:
-
Tidy up the code.
-
Add autotext entries for slides to ICE templates.
-
Add the 'Present' button to ICE / integrate into IMS packge output.
-
Document in the ICE guide.
-
Get real designers (not me!) to make some default CSS.
-
(Later) Support incremental display and outlines.
Next Slidy steps for me
-
Make my presentation for Ausweb
'06using ICE+
Slidy.
-
Write a document/presentation about ICE to give to Sun , you know,
the computer company.