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The Presentation Environment | Understanding Layers and Slides | Using the Presentation Palette | Building a Slide Show |
Advanced Slide Design | Running the Slide Show | Printing Slides | Conclusion |
The presentation environment operates exactly the same as the graphics environment. The only difference is the addition of the ability to create and manage slide shows. A slide show consists of a number of slides. Each slide contains one or more layers. Without a layer, a slide is blank.
When professional graphic artists create images, they use layers to build successive pieces of an image into a whole. Layering allows a graphic artist the ability to break up a complex image into modular sections. The Gobe Productive suite uses this same concept for presentations, allowing you to create numerous layers of content for inclusion into a whole slide.
This diagram represents how slides are put together. Using multiple layers you can break up the content of a slide for easy use and re-use.
Before you create any slides, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the use of the Presentation Palette. This palette designs the layout and structure of your slide show, as well as adds, moves, and edits layers and slides.
For this exercise, we will create a simple two slide presentation about a new pet store. The first page contains a graphic and the company logo. The second page contains a spreadsheet containing a break down of start-up costs. To demonstrate the dynamic features of Gobe Productive, the spreadsheet will be created in a different sheet and linked to the presentation.
Slide shows are meant to be shown on a screen. However, not all screens are the same size. The first step in creating a presentation is to set the size of the screen.
By default, the application creates the first slide and a background layer. The first thing to do is design a background. We'll use this background on each slide so it needs to be as generic as possible.
The Background layer is intended for building a "master slide". This layer should contain all the underlying figures and images to appear on all slides. You can place anything you want on the Background layer. However, those items will appear on all slides where the background layer is associated.
For the background in this example, we'll create a background color as well as a standard footer for each slide.
Next, let's place a footer on each slide.
The final version should look something like this:
Once the background is done, you can switch to building the contents for
the first page.
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NOTE: Notice that when you change focus to another layer the background disappears. When you are working on a layer, all other layers (including the background) are not displayed. To see all the layers for a slide, click on the name of the slide in the presentation palette. Also, any items you place in the workspace are placed on the active layer while all other layers remain unchanged. |
Next, let's add a picture to the slide. You will need some kind of
high quality image file. A GIF, JPG or other image file format will work.
This next slide introduces a rather advanced feature of Gobe Productive. To do this exercise, you must create a new sheet, a new slide and then, link material from the new sheet to the new slide.
In this exercise, you must create a spreadsheet for accounting start-up costs at Samantha's Pet Store. Then, using a named selection, place a reference inside the presentation to the data. This technique allows you to work on data in one environment (the spreadsheet environment) and then link results to another environment.
A | B | C | D | |
1 | January | February | March | |
2 | Rent | $1200.00 | $1200.00 | $1200.00 |
3 | Inventory | $15,345.00 | $12,904.00 | $6,902.00 |
4 | Utilities | $278.00 | $375.00 | $350.00 |
5 | Payroll | $8,250.00 | $8,250.00 | $10,940.00 |
6 | Insurance | $214.00 | $214.00 | $214.00 |
7 | Totals | =SUM(B2..B6) | =SUM(C2..C6) | =SUM(D2..D6) |
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NOTE: If you need more help creating a spreadsheet, see the Developing a Spreadsheet topic in this section. |
The next step is to return to your presentation and place references to this named selection on a presentation layer. Click the appropriate sheet tab for the presentation you were working on previously.
You need to add a new slide to your presentation to display the financial results in your spreadsheet.
After the layer is created, you may need to associate the background layer to the new slide.
You have just created a named reference. Rather than have a "hard-coded" calculation, you can name a range of cells and then reference those cells elsewhere. This way, you can change the original scope of the cells without disrupting the calculations. Named cells are great for presentations because you can do you spreadsheet work elsewhere (even in another sheet) and then display the results of that work in the presentation slide. Since you are not "hard coding" the calculations into the presentation, you can alter the original amounts and the calculations will automatically update.
Format the font, color, and other features to your preference. The finished product for this may look something like this:
To start the slide show from the beginning click the Start button on the Presentation palette. The slide show begins from the first slide, no matter which slide is presently selected in the Presentation palette. You can also select a slide in the Presentation palette from which you want to start the presentation, and click Start Here.
See the Printing a Document topic for more information about how to print.
In this topic, you learned how to design and develop a presentation. In addition, you learned one advanced topic of the Gobe Productive suite, using a named selection in a spreadsheet, to create a dynamic reference. The next topic introduces the features of image processing.
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