Designing PowerPoint Presentations for the Web

Powerpoint can export the slides in a presentation as a linear sequence of web pages complete with navigation, speaker notes, and a table of contents. The entire contents of each slide appear as a graphic with the speaker notes below, although the graphic will be smaller than the original. Visitors also have a text-only option. For this set of features to be available and look good requires following some guidelines:

Do's	Don’ts
Simple Design is best to reduce download time and keep the web version appearance more stable; especially avoid horizontal complexity in your backdrops, this especially increases image size	Complex backdrops take long to download and make the content more difficult to readsince the slide must be shrunk to fit within smaller browser windows
Title placeholders should be used in each slide as these provide the text for links in the table of contents and help visitors guess what each slide might be about before visiting it	Ignore the placeholder or use a slide layout that doesn’t contain one and visitors will be faced with a list of “Powerpoint Slide 1, Powerpoint Slide 2” etc. in the table of contents - not a very inviting title
Notes substitute for what you say during your presentation by fleshing out the shorter material that appears on the page, and notes can provide other details such as supporting data or citations	Guesswork is what visitors will face if you don’t give more information than fits on the slide itself; visitors of all backgrounds may arrive at your page from search engines; help them get oriented
Graphics can help dress up a presentation but keep them simple, they’ll appear smaller on the web version	Complex photos are a sure way to clog someone’s Internet connection, be kind and keep them small
Charts are a good way to illustrate numbers more clearly, just be sure to explain them too	Animation and transitions are left out of the web version to keep presentations compatible with most browsers;  visitors will see pretty much what you’d see if you printed it

 

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