SlideMagic Blog

Overheard in a conversation. “I used to create lots of PowerPoint decks 10 years ago, but would not know how to do this anymore today”.

Graphics designers need to learn how to use Sketch, InDesign, and yes, PowerPoint. Coders need to learn how to work with software development tools.

Twenty years ago, mastering presentation software was a skill. First, dedicated graphics designers and/or secretaries would translate hand-drawn designs into PowerPoint. Then, the junior analysts on teams started to figure it out.

Putting a presentation together is now as normal a task as sending an email: it is a required skill for everyone (from new recruit to CEO) without the need for extensive training. If training (or memory) is required, then it is a software problem. SlideMagic is trying to solve it.

Now that SlideMagic 2.0 is nearing completion I have turned my mind to putting together tutorials. For the moment, I am keeping it short and to the point, you can follow my work here: www.slidemagic.com/tutorial. This is all still work in progress.

I added a spell checker to V2.4.40 of SlideMagic. Incorrectly spelled words get a little underlining, right clicking gives you access to some spelling suggestions, and the option to add a correctly spelled word to the library.

This feature was high on the list of priorities of my daughter, who is using SlideMagic a lot for school projects.

Photo by Edurne Chopeitia on Unsplash

The reminder email has gone out to all SlideMagic 1.0 subscribers to download your presentations before I shut the service down and migrate the platform completely to SlideMagic 2.0. (I will keep the archived presentations but access won’t be instant).

Some people signed up five years ago, and I got some bounces from people who changed jobs / email address. So, another reminder here if you have an account but did not get your email.

Other people. say that it is not completely clear how to download your presentation(s). Here are the steps:

1. Log in to SlideMagic 1.0
2. Open your presentation in SlideMagic 1.0
3. Select the “export” arrow from the left menu
4. Pick “download .magic file”
5. Download and install the SlideMagic 2.0 desktop app
6. Open the .magic file in the desktop app.

Here are the screen shots of the steps:

(Notice how I removed the hard-wired title page with the black bar from SlideMagic 2.0)

Towards the end of October, we will be pulling the plug on the SlideMagic 1.0 server. If you are a SlideMagic 1.0 user, you need to download your presentations as .magic files to your local hard drive, after which you will continue to be able to edit them in the SlideMagic 2.0 app.

SlideMagic 2.0 is vastly superior when compared to 1.0, with much more intuitive user interface, instant PowerPoint and PDF conversion, integrated Unsplash and Pixabay image search, waterfall charts, and a huge template database (SlideMagic 1.0 probably had 20 templates or so), just to name a few features. SlideMagic 1.0 was a web app, SlideMagic 2.0 is a desktop app that also works when you are not connected to the Internet, and has deeper access to your computer’s operating system for things like managing files and copying things between windows.

SlideMagic 1.0 users will be getting a reminder email over then next few days. I do plan to keep the SlideMagic 1.0 user presentations somewhere backed up, but access will be on request and no longer instant as of November 2020.

SlideMagic 1.0 was a necessary step to start the journey, it enabled me to get my head around what a modern presentation app should look like. But it has served its purpose.

The SlideMagic 1.0 log in is here: http://app.slidemagic.com, you can try the new app here https://www.slidemagic.com/app .

As I focused on the user experience of SlideMagic, I kept a temporary payment engine running, it takes a simple payment, but does not yet manage subscriptions. Subscription management is a bit more tricky, you need to keep user payment details on record securely, and manage renewals, cancellations, updates. That will soon all be tightly integrated with the Stripe payments platform.

In the process, I am now taking down the ‘day pass’ pricing option that allowed you to buy a maximum of 10 slide downloads for the duration of 1 day. I think this confusing what SlideMagic is trying to be: a full presentation solution (as opposed to a by-the-slide template business of which there are thousands on the internet).

Now SlideMagic has 2 offerings:

• A free model with access to all slides (for the moment) in .magic format
• A pro model that also includes PowerPoint, PDF conversion, and the ability to add your logo on slides, $99 per seat per year.

The free model gives people a change to get to know SlideMagic, offers a workable solution for users on a low budget (students, etc.). The Pro version is useful for people that need to use SlideMagic for real, share presentations in other formats with colleagues and clients, and need to brand slides in their own look and feel.

I will make sure that the payment engine works in a robust way first, then I will have to resort to modifying the web site with a better illustration of the positioning.

This tweet exactly applies to SlideMagic:

SlideMagic had a few glitches, but unlike established software products, users that suffered got the CEO himself to add designs to the template bank, recover presentations, gave refunds after people claimed they ‘never intended to make that purchase’, deploy patches within a few hours, and say ‘thank you’ even in the very few cases where feedback was not worded that nicely.

I think SlideMagic is getting close to the finish line as a proper and robust product as I am using it intensely myself now. Thank you all for your patience.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Things are a bit quiet here on the blog, as I am using my annual blogging summer holiday to cleanup SlideMagic further. New features are frozen for the moment, as I am 100% focussed on making the app as stable as possible and have been posting regular updates frequently. If you are a frequent user of SlideMagic, you should now be running version 2.4.28.

One visible change I have made in the latest version is a slightly larger image zoom slider, you can see it in the screen shot below. I rotated the slider, it now appears vertically, allowing me to give it more space and make image zooming more precise.

Updates should install automatically eventually but you can force an update by downloading the latest version of SlideMagic manually.

Thelatest version of SlideMagic has the new arrow feature available, finally enabling me to discontinue the dreaded connectors. Arrows are big and bold to show cause-effect relationships or other forces. I made an algorithm to let them do the right thing in terms of layout in various box sizes, and in various aspect ratios, both for horizontal and vertical shapes. In PowerPoint and Keynote it is fiddly to get arrows to look exactly the same once you start changing the angles of the pointer by hand.

When converting to PowerPoint (a pro feature), your arrows will show up as editable PowerPoint arrow shapes.

I can now call SlideMagic 99% feature complete (hmm, line charts?) and will focus on hardening the application to make it absolutely stable.

The legacy connector feature will stay in the background. If you load an old slide that uses it, the legacy arrows will be rendered and you can edit them. If you have to add more legacy connectors, simply shift-click on the connector icon, and you will be given the option to use the old feature.

The new arrows also give me more design freedom to start expanding the template library with new slide layouts that features these ‘fat’ arrows.

Fat arrows are great for showing cause-effect relationships

Arrows follow the color scheme of the cell, black on accent, will give you this result

I am replacing the connectors in SlideMagic with 2 features. The relatively thin lines that connect boxes in a diagram went live yesterday. Currently I am working on the 2nd feature: fat arrows to show cause-effect relationships or other forces.

As I already discussed back in 2017, it is tricky to get arrows to look right in presentation software. The aspect ratio of the containing box, the angles of the arrow, some come out great, others won’t.

And even if you got one right on your slide by moving the various sliders in the shape, how do you make sure that the 3 below it look exactly the same? Oh, and then you need to insert a fifth one and squeeze everything a bit…

I think I am on to a possible solution. I scribbled an algorithm on a piece of paper, now let’s see how to bring it to life in SlideMagic, and then convert them to PowerPoint. The latter might have to be via an image rather than a dynamic shape. Below is a screenshot of my development machine. Work in progress.