Transcript diet

Putting Your Content on a Diet
Using rich online media without
download woes
ITL conference 2003
Overview
This presentation will focus on methods to
make slide presentations and other
complex documents available to students
for web download without huge wait times
or other problems.
We will see various file-size reduction
techniques, as well as suggestions for
alternative formats.
Distributing Presentations
 Making native format (PPT) available
requires users to have special software
 May not work on all platforms (Mac!)
 Accessibility issues
 PPT needs to be downloaded entirely
before first slide can be viewed
 Web version or PDF format can display
first slide right away
Converting PPT to web format
 Need to choose to publish for all
browsers!
 Different quality and functionality with
different browsers
 IE uses PPT ActiveX engine internally,
thus offers rich functionality (Windows
only)
 Embedded media (e.g. Flash) won’t
work except in IE
 Huge accessibility issues with
Converting PPT to PDF
 Need to install Acrobat after Office!
 …get PDFmaker macro (button on
toolbar)
 Converts in one step, but takes its time
 May have trouble with very large PPT
files
 PDF file needs to be opened in Acrobat:
rotate all pages 90º clockwise
 Set open option to Full Screen
PDF presentations
 Will advance on mouse-click only if this
viewer preference is set, otherwise use
PgDn
 Will preserve slide transitions, but not
builds
 For builds, will create one PDF slide per
step
 Will preserve hyperlinks on slides, but not
embedded media
Printing Slide Presentations
 PDF presentations can only be printed
as full slides (unless printer does 2-up,
4-up)
 But can be print-disabled to save
toner&trees
 PPT offers full range of print options,
but students often print full slides
 Make PDF of handouts or Notes pages
 If text-rich presentation, offer outline as
Image-rich Presentations
…as used in Architecture, Art
History, Medicine, Biology,
Geology, etc.
Problem: scanned
photographs
 While line graphics and clipart do not
contribute significantly to PPT filesize,
lots of photographs can quickly make
huge files
 File format: JPEG vs. TIFF/BMP (big!!!)
 Scan resolution too high: huge files
 Purpose is screen display (96 or 72
pixels)
 PowerPoint lets you resize images,
Photographs
 All image edits in PPT
are reversible
 PPT will contain
original inserted
image data
 Resize large photos
in a photo editor (e.g.
Photoshop) before
inserting them into
PPT
Solution: PDF conversion
 Ideal for photo-rich PPTs
 Sample: Argentina photo tour (>14MB)
Improved version (8MB) Even better
(1.3MB)
 PDF version (231KB)
 Web version (made with PPT97) (153KB)
 Web version for IE (PPT2000) (>14MB)
 Web version for Netscape (PPT2000) (212
KB)
Media-rich presentations
Sounds, Video, Animations
Audio and Video
 PowerPoint is Presentation software
 Its rich media capabilities are intended
for local playback to a room audience
 It is not optimized for Internet delivery
 Audio narration and sounds will be
embedded into PPT file, creating huge
files
 Video will be linked, thus has to stay in
same folder as PPT file itself
Audio and Video Options
 To avoid long wait times for download,
audio and video should be streamed
when delivered over the network
 To use streaming media in your slide
presentations, best to just put a
link/button on a slide that will launch
standalone player
 Can then switch player Play
to full-screen
sample sound
mode
 Play sample video
Audio and Video Web Delivery
For Internet presentations with
audio/video, use special narration
software:
 impatica
 PresenterONE
 RealPresenter
 ShowAndTell
 Visual Communicator
Distributing Documents
Text and Images
Scanned Sources
 Scanning records pixel data, not text
 Must do OCR (optical character
recognition) to get text: searchable,
convertible, accessible
 Ideal: Omnipage 12 or 11 to PDF format:
preserves layout, looks good, searchable
 But: complex layouts (columns) not
accessible
 Need tagged PDF (Make-Accessible
Other documents
 If elaborate layouts, tables, images
PDF
 Else best to convert to HTML for wide
availability and easy access without
additional software or performance
problems
 Easy to do in word processors etc.
 Use MS Office HTML filter for cleanup of
Office2000/XP junk XML
 Or use DreamWeaver