impress.js - I’m impressed.
I thought I’d mention a new tool that my brother, Justin, recommended we use at work for a recent presentation we were putting together. We had been using Apple’s Keynote, which is certainly a slick piece of software, and miles ahead of PowerPoint, but I recently found it wanting. In attempting to update our previous corporate Keynote template, I became frustrated with the cumbersome tools and process required. I wanted to more easily adapt some of the web styles of corporate site into our presentation.
Enter impress.js. I was already somewhat familiar with Prezi, and found Prezi presentations to be a bit more interesting than previous generous products could produce, but impress.js has blown me away. After viewing all of the example presentations, I was convinced this would suit our needs well. I was able to produce a presentation that reused a good deal of our corporate branding in the form of existing images and css and without going too crazy with the effects, I was able to produce a very dynamic and engaging presentation. I was able to work in familiar technologies (HTML/CSS) and code in my favorite editor, Vim.
We found Safari worked best for the effects we were using, with Chrome choking on a couple of “slides”. It also just performed better. Anyway, I can definitely recommend checking out impress.js. There’s a slight learning curve, but I have found it was easy to pick up once you get started, and well worth it.
