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Ask HN: What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there?

180 points by altoz ↗ HN
I'm doing a lot of teaching and I've been using PowerPoint. I recently saw some people use Prezi and liked what they were able to do to map concepts visually to make them easier to understand. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of the features that made Prezi powerful have been neutered in Prezi Next and isn't able to do a lot of what I'm looking for (no path editing, no infinite canvas, etc). What alternatives are there?

Some requirements for me:

* WYSIWIG editor * Tutorials * Infinite canvas/Path editing

99 comments

[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread
LarryMade2
How about Sozi? its an extension for inkscape - http://sozi.baierouge.fr/
seltzered_
This is pretty fascinating, the about page sums it up http://sozi.baierouge.fr/pages/10-about.html .

Guessing it may also be possible to do some of the heavy lifting in another vector drawing app (e.g. sketch) then finish the presentation aspects in Inkscape/Sozi

jldugger
Came to recommend this. It's more or less WSYWIG, and while you'll want to learn Inkscape first, it has its own set of tutorials for Sozi specifics.
Numberwang
reveal.js wins every time.
EngineerBetter
+1 for reveal.js. I use it for several professional training courses that we deliver, as well as conference presentations.

Given that it's HTML/Markdown, it's great to use in a team with version control. I know folks that have extended it to allow SVG animations.

CJefferson
slides.com is a front-end for reveal.js, made by the authors of reveal. Nowadays I just write reveal.js directly, but it was nice to have a GUI when I was first getting started
sitkack
The thing that always got me with reveal was nested slides and whether I was supposed to nav with the arrow keys or not. Turns out if you ONLY hit the space bar it will visit the slides in-order. I guess.

But I think the OP was looking for a zoomable surface, which reveal doesn't offer.

http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/

tootie
Can it do boxes and arrows stuff?
massaman_yams
I don't know if this satisfies your infinite canvas requirement, but I've used https://slides.com/ quite a bit. Similar to reveal.js.

edit: as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, "slides.com is a front-end for reveal.js, made by the authors of reveal."

djsumdog
Yea it's not as fancy, but I really like reveal.js. I do presentations at Python, Scala and Ruby meetups based on the same project, and I have a reveal.js project set up so I can easily build slides:

https://github.com/bigsense/presentations

INTPenis
I've used slides.com with great success.

I love the websocket feature that let's you use your phone as a slide changer. It feels very professional but free.

rnhmjoj
http://impress.github.io/impress.js
pksadiq
I have had issues with impress.js when my laptop's resolution was different from the projector's.
josephernest
BigPicture might be what you're looking for: http://bigpicture.bi/demo

* Infinite canvas

* Infinite zooming

* WYSIWIG

* Demo

* Opensource: https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js

If you zoom on some vegetables here http://bigpicture.bi/Legumes you'll find the recipe :)

nikofeyn
that big picture website is hardly usable on an iPad.
josephernest
Mobile not supported for now.

But on the other hand, there's nearly no equivalent tool available nowadays ;)

redmattred
Overhead projector + transparencies
agumonkey
finger in sand drawing with circle gathering (almost not joking at all)
potta_coffee
This style of communication was super common when I was in the infantry. "Sand Table Terrain Modeling" and "Rock Drills". IMO it's very effective.
twovi
I use Marp, quick and dirty. But it allows for Markdown to PDF presentations.
inamberclad
No one has mentioned LibreOffice?
alekratz
I'll second LibreOffice. It's much more polished than OpenOffice, and it's quite functional and mature. It has definitely gotten the TLC that OpenOffice so desperately needed about 10 years ago. I'm not sure if it has the infinite canvas that the OP is looking for, but it's definitely nothing to sneeze at.
jacmoe
It's more polished because the (almost) entire team of OpenOffice left and created the LibreOffice project, AFAIK.

Same as what happened with MySQL -> MariaDB.

BeetleB
Org Mode + Beamer (a LaTeX package).

Although personally, these days I tend to use Reveal (using org-reveal).

jMyles
I want to suggest that WYSIWYG is a really bad formula for presentations.

For my part, I really like Hovercraft (makes impress.js using RST): https://github.com/regebro/hovercraft

If all you are looking for out of WYSIWYG is ease, then I think something like this is just as easy.

nrjames
I think you can make presentations with Omnigraffle, which has an infinite canvas.
kim0
reveal-md if you like markdown!
hayksaakian
Google slides is pretty good and free, I'm surprised nobody mentioned it already
asdojasdosadsa
The portability and co-working capabilities just can't really be matched easily, as far as i know. It's really a great tool
enraged_camel
The fact that it is cloud-based and therefore requires an Internet connection means it is the opposite of "portable" for me. When I go to client meetings and have to deliver a presentation, I can't assume I will be connected to the Internet. That's why I use PowerPoint.
hayksaakian
I usually export/download Google Slides as a PDF to avoid any issues during important meetings

This avoids any issues with software not loading / messing up (powerpoint) too.

LoveMortuus
I really like using Google Slides, and whenever I had a presentation, I would just download in all different formats for PowerPoint, so that I cover the compatibility issues, but I have encountered that the PowerPoint export didn't look the same as the Google Slides one, so I highly recommend check the files before leaving your PC!
ptman
Isn't that really a problem with PowerPoint as well? If you e.g. use a font that isn't available on the computer you use to present. PDF export solves this, typically.
steren
In the browser != Requires connection.
freehunter
Right? Might as well say "have to download the exe from the Internet? That must mean it's online-only".

Connection-free browser apps have been with us long enough that we can't assume either way.

quickthrower2
The benefit of an exe is you can simply keep it on a USB incase it needs installing elsewhere. Also you know for sure it's offline and isn't fickle to a browser history clear out.
sh87
But then again its in a usb. Cant really rely on usb ports being open to me or that i wont have to present on a 2017 mac which, unsurprisingly does not have a usb port or on a windows machine i plop in my usb ready to present and all i can present is the antivirus scan progress bar moving slower than san francisco traffic at peak hours. So lets just take print outs to be safe. So much for the effort i put in getting the fonts and colors just right.
robotresearcher
Maybe because:

> Some requirements for me: * Infinite canvas/Path editing

constexpr
Figma (https://www.figma.com) is probably a perfect fit for your use case. It's an interface design tool but it can also be used for presentations. Benefits:

* Free for individual use

* Completely cross-platform (browser-based)

* Has an infinite canvas

* Has advanced path editing

* Has a presentation mode for slides (the play button)

* Supports simultaneous real-time editing if you need to work with someone else

lighttower
Looks really interesting. Thanks for this. How do you make it useful for slides? Each slide is one UI mockup?