Saturday, April 16, 2005
Powerpoint Management Systems - continued
Okay, so I tried my hands on a couple of CMSes that let me manage PPTs. Of the lot, I liked Xaraya (using John's theme - Thanks John for providing that). I couldn't even get the others up and running. This is not to blame those products. I am sure they are good products but I was limited by my lack of PHP and Python skills.
Although, not a CMS, I also liked ReportLab's PythonPoint.
I successfully created a PoC, demonstrating how easy it is to achieve content independence in presentations. Unfortunately, I am back to using PPTs :(. This is primarily because most business guys are very comfortable with Powerpoint and most customers use that.
Secondly, powerpoint provides these business guys the power to make a presentation the way they want whereas a CMS would impose descpline, which sadly most people donot like.
Thirdly, the fact remains that these implementations are still much behind Powerpoint. One cannot achieve "build effects", format images by dragging mouse pointer, navigate from one slide to another. For example, in Xaraya, it is difficult to change the order of slides in your publication. If I created 15 slides and want to show 5 to one person and another set of 10 to others, I cannot "hide" certain slides. Essentially, i need to create a different publication for each slide deck, which basically defeats the purpose of using a CMS - I have to enter content multiple times!!
I am still trying and would love to be proven wrong.
Although, not a CMS, I also liked ReportLab's PythonPoint.
I successfully created a PoC, demonstrating how easy it is to achieve content independence in presentations. Unfortunately, I am back to using PPTs :(. This is primarily because most business guys are very comfortable with Powerpoint and most customers use that.
Secondly, powerpoint provides these business guys the power to make a presentation the way they want whereas a CMS would impose descpline, which sadly most people donot like.
Thirdly, the fact remains that these implementations are still much behind Powerpoint. One cannot achieve "build effects", format images by dragging mouse pointer, navigate from one slide to another. For example, in Xaraya, it is difficult to change the order of slides in your publication. If I created 15 slides and want to show 5 to one person and another set of 10 to others, I cannot "hide" certain slides. Essentially, i need to create a different publication for each slide deck, which basically defeats the purpose of using a CMS - I have to enter content multiple times!!
I am still trying and would love to be proven wrong.
