Tips for Online PowerPoint Presentations

One of the inconveniences of publishing presentations made in Microsoft PowerPoint XP 2003 is that many of the rules to good presentation design go against the rules of good web page design. While the presentation may be very legible on an LCD projector, it may be very difficult to read when viewed in a web browser on a standard monitor. This is a list of tips to consider when designing a presentation that will be published online.

• Use large fonts.

  As with most presentations, larger fonts are more legible than smaller fonts. This is even more necessary because a computer monitor is much smaller than a projector screen.

• Use SanSerif fonts.

  While Serif fonts (Times New Roman, Helvetica, etc.) are preferred on printed documents, SansSerif fonts (Arial, Verdana, etc.) look best in web pages. Try to use SansSerif fonts in the web version of your presentation, and reserve Serif fonts for any printed media that you wish to use.

  Also, decorative fonts and novelty fonts are best avoided in headings and content. While they may have limited use in splash images and can make your presentation more dynamic in small doses, they are too much of a distraction and a strain to those who are trying to read them.

Serif Fonts	SansSerif Fonts

• Use the proper image format.

  The two most-accepted image formats for web pages are GIF and JPEG. GIF images have limited color depth and are best used when displaying text, banners, or clip art. JPEG images are compressed and have a much higher color depth, making them more suitable for photos and complex graphics. Use each format appropriately. Saving a photo as a GIF will result in colors that do not blend well, and saving a banner as a JPEG may cause multiple compression artifacts to appear.

  Notice the two examples below. While the GIF logo on the left is sharply-defined and clean, its JPEG equivalent on the right appears somewhat blurry, and the colors are smudged. The JPEG scene below it, however, has bright colors, sharp features, and looks like an actual photo. The GIF scene on the left does not appear as bright, and many of its colors are faded with respect to the original. In both cases, the proper image format to use is a clear choice.

GIF	JPEG

• Compress JPEG's using your image editor.

  Microsoft PowerPoint includes a feature to compress JPEG images for reduced file sizes, but enabling this option will have no noticable effect on the online presentations. Both image quality and file size will remain unchanged. To optimally compress your JPEG images, use an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.

• Use Internet Explorer to view presentations.

  Microsoft PowerPoint presentations look many times better when viewed in the Internet Explorer browser because of many Microsoft-exclusive navigation features included in the web page itself. Other browsers - Netscape Navigator, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, etc. - can still view these presentations, but many of the more advanced features will not be enabled.

• Avoid black-and-white color schemes.

  Black-and-white color schemes - like Serif fonts - are best reserved for printed materials. Use a real color scheme when designing your presentation, but test your scheme using both a browser and a project to make sure it is easily visible on both.

• Use appropriate image sizes.

  The size of the images used in your presentation is relative to the size of the monitor on which they are being viewed. If you are designing your presentation for a resolution of 800×600, use images that are close to a resolution of 640×480. Similarly, for a presentation resolution of 1024×768, use an image resolution of 800×600.