Mini-review: Keynote presentation software

Jan 11, '03 12:18:06AM

Contributed by: robg

I received my copies of Keynote and Final Cut Express today. I haven't had any time to look at FCPExpress yet (other than to note that the 750 page manual comes only as a PDF), I spent a couple hours playing around with Keynote tonight, and thought I'd write a brief review of the program (oddly enough, Keynote does include a 100-page printed manual that does a great job of explaining the program).

As a summary, I'll just say that I can't see going back to PowerPoint again ... read the rest of the article for some of the details on why not.

The first thing I noticed about Keynote is that it doesn't feel like a "version 1.0" application. The interface is polished, and every time I thought "Geez, it'd be useful if it did something like this," I found out that it could, indeed, do something like that. It seems Steve was providing excellent feedback during his one-year beta test!

Nice touches abound, from the alignment guides that pop into view when one object gets closely aligned (vertical or horizontal) with another, to the slide view that supports indenting and collapsing views of sub-slides, to the ability to open more than one inspector window, to the great collection of photographic-quality included artwork (though more would be nice).

I spent about 45 minutes converting a recent PowerPoint presentation to Keynote format. About one minute of that time was required to actually convert the presentation; the other 44 were me playing around with nicer transitions, graphics, fonts, and transparency!

Keynote seamlessly handles audio, video, graphics, and text, and it has an incredibly intuitive interface. Once you've used the slide navigation panel on the left, you'll wonder how you ever used the old-fashioned slide sorter in PowerPoint. The charts and graphs are top notch, and the included transitions rendered quickly and added a degree of professionalism you just can't get in the Microsoft offering.

Keynote runs a bit slowly on my G3/500 iBook, and very nicely on the G4/733. About the only time I noticed a slow-down was when working with a lot of text on one slide; it was slow to activate the selection, but then plenty fast when typing and/or editing.

The interface isn't perfect, but it's very well done and quite easy to use. The included printed manual explained the program's features thoroughly, including how to create customized themes and master slides. There's even an included sample presentation that shows additional tips and tricks.

The exports to QuickTime looked and performed great, capturing even the advanced transitions with a good level of detail. They take a few minutes to export (probably about 10 to 15 seconds a slide), but the final product is worth the wait. I did not try exporting to PowerPoint or PDF.

I had a number of presentations and sample libraries open, and was cutting and pasting back and forth quite often during the two hours I spent with the program tonight. Not once did I have a crash or unexplained glitch, which is quite impressive for a first release in today's environment.

Limitations? I wish it had a method of inserting a soundtrack across all the slides, and the handling of music clips within a slide isn't quite as precise as I might have liked. But that's about all I can come up with on the shortfalls list.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my $99 investment in Keynote, and can't wait to see what new features future versions bring...

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