Among the most useful facilities here is the ability to export a presentation to the HTML or web page format. This feature allows us to painlessly convert any presentation we’ve given to the Web so the audience, as well as those who were unable to attend, can visit the material from any Internet-enabled location on the planet, at their own convenience.

Figures Figure 8-35 to Figure 8-42 guide you through the steps to export to HTML, while altering the fewest settings possible, and while pointing out some of the optional settings along the way.

Start by selecting File → Export . . . from StarImpress’s Main menu. This launches the Save As window. Here, change the File format drop-down box to HTML Document and designate the filename and directory of the resulting HTML files. Then click the Export button to kick off the HTML Export dialog series.

First, select a design. (See Figure 8-35.) If it’s your first time, leaving the default, as is, and clicking the Next button is fine.

Figure 8-35. Choose a design to export

Figure 8-36 offers a number of options, known as Publication types, that affect how the presentation appears and can be manipulated. Among these types are:

Figure 8-36. Publication types and options

Here, we accept the default and click Next. This shows Figure 8-37, which offers various choices for graphics.

Figure 8-37. Graphics, resolution, and effects settings

Here, you can alter the format of graphics in the output and the resolution of output, and turn sound effects on or off. Leaving the settings at their defaults works fine.

Click Next to show the dialog in Figure 8-38.

Figure 8-38. Add title page information

This screen permits you to enter information that appears on the title page of the new web presentation. Enter the desired information and click Next for Figure 8-39.

Figure 8-39. Choose navigational buttons

Here, you can set the look of the navigational elements you like, such as forward and backward arrows. Leaving the “Text only” box checked (the default setting) produces text links, but you also have a choice of four styles of colorful buttons.

Click Next for Figure 8-40.

Figure 8-40. Select a text color scheme

In this final screen of the export process, you can alter the default color scheme of the text. Leaving settings alone works fine for first-timers.

Finally, click the Create button. Figure 8-41 illustrates a page of the final web presentation that we have just created.

Figure 8-41. The final result

Not to be overshadowed, among the many output formats, is Macromedia Flash. This is yet another universally acceptable file format (along with PDF and HTML, in particular), which guarantees that anyone with a web browser (that is, everyone with a desktop computer) can view your presentation. Many of the same benefits of converting a presentation to HTML web pages (described above) hold, too, for the Flash format.

To export your presentation to Flash, proceed to the Main menu and select File → Export . . . . This opens the Export dialog box where you should go to the File Format: drop-down field and select “Macromedia Flash (SWF)(.swf ).” In the Export dialog box, if you do not alter the folder or save path, the new Flash version of your presentation is automatically placed in the same folder as the original .sxi presentation file. Now, click the Export . . . button, and the Flash version of your presentation is created.

This is the common working mode for creating a presentation. Only Drawing View and Notes View are available to Slide Mode.

Master Mode is where you set global formats such as fonts, and add elements, such as logos, backgrounds, or themes that you may wish to carry across every slide.

To enter Master Mode, select View → Master from the Main menu.

Layers Mode helps you segregate three different kinds of elements, so you can edit each kind of element (via tabs), without conflict:

Layers may be locked, hidden, added, or deleted to help you organize elements within your presentation. The complexity of layers puts its functionality outside the scope of this book. However, the power of layers for aiding the organization of a presentation makes it worth mentioning for users who are inclined to pursue further knowledge on their own.

To enter or edit a sequence of text, click once on the text. You see a shaded block appear around the text with green squares at intervals around the box, as illustrated in Figure 8-49. Move the cursor to the appropriate place and enter changes. Clicking elsewhere in the slide makes the shaded block go away, and you can move on.

Figure 8-49. Editing textual elements

To introduce a bullet to a line of text, click once on the targeted text, then click the bullets icon, centrally located on the Object bar. If you’re not sure what to press, let the mouse hover over the icons and choose the one where the Bullets On/Off balloon appears.

If you are sophisticated about the formatting of your bullets, click the alternative Bullets icon, at the extreme right of the Object bar. This brings up a dialog box with a selection of bullet and numbering styles, and other formatting options.

To import a graphic, table, or chart from another program, web page, or module of StarOffice, simply copy the element from its native source and paste it into your slide.

This, for example, may involve highlighting the item in its original application with a single click and pressing Ctrl-C to copy it (actually placing the element onto the desktop’s clipboard). Then click in your slide once and press Ctrl-V to paste in the element.

The landing spot may not be perfect, so adjust the position of the imported object by clicking on it and holding the mouse button, while shifting the position of the mouse pointer, a simple drag-and-drop.

To add or insert a slide into your presentation, simply select Insert → Slide from the Main menu, choose the desired AutoLayout format in the Insert Slide dialog that appears, and press the OK button. You can name the new slide in the Name field of the Insert Slide dialog. The name you enter there appears on the slide’s tab, toward the bottom of the window. The Insert → Slide procedure produces a blank slide, inserted just to the right of the current slide, which you can then fill in, as desired.

Quite often it’s quicker to duplicate a nearby slide by selecting Insert → Duplicate Slide and then making a few adjustments.

You can quickly delete a slide by right-clicking on its tab and selecting Delete . . . from the contextual menu. Alternatively, from the Main menu, select Edit → Delete Slide.

In the view/mode, in which most people normally edit or build a presentation (i.e., Drawing View, Slide Mode—see Figure 8-48 to locate the View and Mode icons and check the current setting), the easiest way to move slides around is to simply click, drag and drop the tab of any slide to insert it into a new sequence among the tabs.

While this method is speedy, it offers poor visibility of the surrounding slides’ contents. The best way to move slides around is to change the view to Slide View by clicking the Slide View icon at the upper-right edge of the workspace. (See Figures Figure 8-47 and 8-48.) Now, with many slides in full view (although they are small), it is easy to click, then drag and drop a given slide from its current location to another location with a clear view of the slides. Note in Figure 8-50 how a helpful vertical black bar appears to emphasize a new destination, when you drag a slide over other slides. Also note how the dragged slide appears in outlined form as you move it.

Figure 8-50. Moving a slide in Slide View

A simple change of background fill for a color, gradient, or hatching pattern, for either a single slide or the entire presentation, is easy to effect. To change the background for a single slide, enter Slide Mode (if you are not already there) by clicking the Slide Mode button at the extreme left of the tab bar, along the bottom edge of your workspace. (See Figure 8-48.) Then, select Format → Page from the Main menu and, in the Page Setup window, click on the Background tab. In the Fill area, now select one of the Color, Gradient, or Hatching radio buttons. Then select the appropriate choice and press OK.

To change the background for every slide in your presentation, simply repeat the above procedure, after clicking on the Master Mode button that is second from the left on the tab bar, along the bottom edge of your workspace. (See Figure 8-48.)

Most presentations have a logo or unique image that is imbedded as part of the background of each slide. Companies typically provide a high-quality image that employers can use; if you’re in a smaller organization or working alone you may need to find or build a background image of your own. There are many different kinds of digital image formats around, but StarImpress uses the bitmap image format for introducing custom backgrounds to a slide presentation.

To insert a bitmap image as a background, first import a bitmap image you’ve stored somewhere on your filesystems and then make the background change, as further described below. To import a bitmap file, select Format → Area from the Main menu and, in the Area window, select the Bitmaps tab. Here, click on the Import . . . button at the right, find the bitmap file on your system, and click the Open button. This brings you back to the Background tab, where you notice that the bitmap file has been added to the Bitmap list.

To change the background of a single slide to a bitmap image, enter Slide Mode (click the Slide Mode button at the extreme left, along the bottom edge of the workspace) and then select Format → Page from the Main menu. Then, click on the Background tab, click the Bitmap radio button there, and select your image from the Bitmap list. To display the entire image as the background, which is customary for an uncluttered appearance, clear the Tile check box (in the Position area of the Background tab window) and make sure that the AutoFit check box is checked. (If you want a tiled look, leave the Tile box checked.) Then, click the OK button. Now you are prompted by a small Page Settings window, which asks you, “Background Settings for all pages?” with a Yes and a No button. Click the No button if you want this bitmap image as the background for only the current page of your presentation, and your image is then set as the background to that current page.

To change the background for all the slides in your presentation to a bitmap image, enter Master Mode (click the Master Mode button that is second from the left, along the bottom edge of the workspace) and then select Format → Page from the Main menu. Click on the Background tab, click the Bitmap radio button there, and then select your image from the Bitmap list. Finally, click the OK button.

Changing the bitmap image background for all slides in a presentation can be tricky, especially if you’ve inherited the presentation from someone else in your organization and it already has a bitmap background that you want to change. If you have difficulty changing the background from one bitmap image to another in Master Mode, you can return to Slide Mode and delete the background bitmap image for each individual slide. Then go back and set the background for the whole presentation in Master Mode.

To delete each individual slide’s background while in Slide Mode, click somewhere on the background’s surface (avoiding any content elements in the slide, such as text or graphics). You will see eight small green squares appear around the extreme edges of the slide. Press the Delete key to make the bitmap image background. Repeat the procedure for each slide individually.

To start a slideshow of a presentation that is open and live on your desktop, simply press the function key, F9. This starts a full-screen slideshow at the current slide.

If you want to start at a particular slide, just click on that slide, then press F9.

To end a slideshow and return to the mode you had for editing the presentation, press the Esc key.

To set the transition for a single slide, select Slide Show → Slide Transition from the Main menu. The illustration in Figure 8-51 shows the transition options available.

Figure 8-51. The Slide Transition window

You can choose a slow, medium, or fast transition speed in the drop-down menu at the bottom of the Slide Transition window.

If you favor using a single kind of slide transition throughout your whole presentation, it’s most efficient to set this up for all slides at the same time, using AutoPilot, when you first start building a presentation. See Section 8.4.2 and refer to Figure 8-31.

You can set up many different versions of the same presentation, using only chosen slides and different settings. This is convenient for adapting different parts of one large presentation to specific audiences. You can also use it to preconfigure versions of a presentation that offer greater detail, and thus, you can switch to these spontaneously during a presentation to cover the intricate points that you might otherwise spare a general audience.

To define a new Custom Slide Show, from the Main menu of your live source presentation, select Slide Show → Custom Slide Show . . . , which opens the Custom Slide Shows dialog (Figure 8-52), and press the New button.

Figure 8-52. The Custom Slide Show dialog

This opens the Define Custom Slide Show dialog (Figure 8-53), where you can name the new version of your slide show and select which slides are to be included. To select a given slide for inclusion, highlight that slide in the Existing slides pane at the lefthand side of the dialog. Then, click the uppermost of the two arrow buttons, and your chosen slide is entered into the Selected slides pane at the righthand side of the dialog.

Figure 8-53. The Define Custom Slide Show dialog