SlideMagic Blog

An update on the development of the SlideMagic PowerPoint plugin. One of the main reasons my first submission to Microsoft was rejected is that the current version of the plugin does not run on PowerPoint 2013 and the Windows 7 operating system, largely because I pretty much ignored Internet Explorer as a browser option. Microsoft itself does not really support Windows 7 anymore. The other problem is that it is actually hard to debug a plugin for Office 2013, I tried actually buying a copy, but you cannot get it anymore… On top of that, it turns that you cannot run multiple versions of Office on one computer. The strange situation is now that in order to develop add-ins for the latest versions of Office, you actually need to do that on a super old machine. If there is anyone reading this who can help, please reach out.

But OK, challenge accepted. I will begin to ‘dumb down’ the server response to calls from within Office applications. I can test the rendering of the screens in Internet Explorer 11 (just installed it), and have to hope that rest works in Office 2013 without testing. Hopefully the second submission will get accepted.

The current version still works but requires some level of computers skills and courage to get it to work.

Image by Masaru Kamikura

I created a few new images to show the features of the SlideMagic presentation app. I am started to feel very good about where SlideMagic is going. This post is a bit like a 1980s Dutch consumer product commercial where “We, people of [product] recommend… [product]. I, the developer of SlideMagic recommend…. SlideMagic.

Search templates directly inside the app. Currently, the app gives free access to all slide templates in the SlideMagic database

Instant PowerPoint conversion

Integrated online image search

Integrated online icon search

Patented user interface keeps everything lined up

Dark/light background colour switching

Collapsable slide explanation panel when you cannot present in person

Dual monitor support

Distortion-free aspect ratio conversion

Photo by Yunming Wang on Unsplash

“What, you are making a desktop app in 2020? Well, we (the U.S.) have moved totally into the cloud now, everyone is using Google Docs to collaborate. Maybe people in less developed countries might find your product interesting if it is offered at a low price (i.e., people who cannot afford Google Docs and/or are using pirated copies of PowerPoint. Your next challenge is to make your product available in non-English languages and get sales distribution in these markets (do you need some contacts?).”

OK.

I now start to feel first hand what entrepreneurs go through when talking to others (especially investors) with their product. I am not raising money at the moment, but here is a possible way of answering a question like this.

• On the one hand SlideMagic is a desktop app, on purpose. Presentation design requires a super snappy interface, and deep access to the operating system (dragging things between 2 files open in a window for example).
• On the other hand, SlideMagic is not a real desktop app. It is written in HTML and Javascript and runs on Google Chromium, the current web development setup, and the app is updated very frequently in the background (sometimes daily).
• SlideMagic focuses on 1 (huge) issue in presentations: story clarity and design, not online collaboration, not enterprise security, not cloud file storage, not data analysis, not stunning animations, not knowledge storage and search, not intra-employee information sharing. All these are important issues that have great software products built for them, by billion dollar companies.
• SlideMagic’s economic setup allows it to do this: a super lean cost base, and a former strategy consultant, presentation designer, computer scientist brain combined in one head to try and get product-market fit for what no one has managed to do: get people to make better presentations. Millions of dollars of VC money, huge teams of people with the objective of dethroning Microsoft or Google is not what were are doing here. SlideMagic needs very little to turn profitable, SlideMagic can afford to take its time with product iterations to get there. Only when the formula catches on, investing is growth is on the agenda.

This tweet flew by about Warren Buffett’s slides during his annual investor meeting.

A sans serif font and centering the text would have made it look better, but overall, this slide is actually not that bad. One big message without distractions. (If Warren had used SlideMagic with this template, his slide would have looked like this)

Other slides are less crisp though, as seen in the example below:

But, Warren does not read out the bullet points, he tells a story starting with background about his father. People will read the slide for 2 seconds, wonder about the quote, and then focus all attention back on him.

OK, I could not resist, SlideMagic would have produced the following slide (a quick search for “1930” in the built-in Pixabay image search delivers good results)

I would put the quote on a completely separate slide, if at all.

Coming back to the first tweet. If you are Warren Buffett, then you get away with pretty much any slide design. On the contrary, making it all too fancy is a direct contradiction to his modest life style. If you are not Warren Buffett, putting in 2 seconds worth of effort with SlideMagic will definitely make a difference.

I tagged these 2 slide examples with “buffet” in SlideMagic, you can use them in your own designs and find them in the presentation app, or download them here.

Pixabay offers a large database of free stock images. The site has become increasingly useful over the past years. In 2020, free images are now often better than paid stock photos, simply because the designer/photographer tries less hard to add effects and edits to the original photographs. (This is all written from the perspective of a corporate presentation designer, there are probably other people out there who value edited images).

Each free image site has its own profile. Unsplash has better aesthetics, more natural images. Pixabay has more functional images.

I have now added the ability to search Pixabay images in the desktop app. (Unsplash images, and the Noun Project icons were already present). All implementations are still beta features, as I finalise the approval for the API. (But I am confident I checked all the right boxes).

In-app image search is not just a “lazy” feature. It can greatly improve your presentation design workflow. Especially when it comes to copying, pasting, cropping and positioning images. In SlideMagic, this is just a few clicks. And, because of SldieMagic’s rigid slide grid, every image will always line up neatly with the other elements of your slide.

You can download the latest version of SlideMagic here (2.3.6). Integrated image search requires a pro subscription plan.

Even presentations not made in SlideMagic can look like one. Have a look at “Standing on the shoulders of giants” by analyst Ben Evans:

The design approach:

• One strong accent colour
• Lots of variations of grey
• Calm slide layouts
• Clear grid structure

SlideMagic does not like these circles (yet) though and makes you fit into that boxy look :-).

For your next presentation, put the slides in slide sorter view, and take a step back. Do things look consistent in terms of layout, colour, and the balance between white space vs used space? If you struggle to stick to the discipline, SlideMagic is here to help.

Version 2.3.5 of SlideMagic went up this morning. The interface for searching images from within the desktop application now looks a lot better in a grid layout that takes into account portrait or landscape aspect ratios of photos.

I will further improve the in-app image search soon, with a preview ability to test the image in your slide, and combining more than one image bank provider. A lot is changing in the world of online stock images at the moment, to the extend where I often find free images to be of better quality than paid ones.

Business presentations are different from ads or consumer graphics design projects: picking the right image and getting the credits right is what matters. More to come soon.

The image search API calls are still a beta feature with limits on the amount of searches per hour and/or the image resolution, as I need to make sure my (unusual desktop) app gets the back linking and credits done in agreement with the image bank provider.

One more feature was added: tool tips for the app icons after feedback from a user. Leave your mouse stationary for a second, and the app will suggest what you can do here. Most icons and actions are obvious, but while placing them, I realised that indeed a few things were hidden and/or unclear.

You can download the latest version of SlideMagic here.

I changed the “try a search” page on SlideMagic as I am finally getting around to paying attention to the home page. Now you get a random set of 25. Pressing the link a few times reveals the big variety of slides that are now available in SlideMagic. All for free when searching from within the desktop app.

When repositioning images in SlideMagic, there used to be the slightly lag when dragging the mouse. I spent days and days over the past year trying to fix this, but got to a point where I gave up after reading posts of other developer who compromised on a “fudge” approach for the exact same issue (in a different software of course).

Well, no longer. As of version 2.3.1, images follow the mouse button precisely. Deep, deep, down in the world of CSS was a weird way of calculating things, that combined with how I keep track of a slide coordinates made this one particularly tricky to solve, but it is done.

Also in 2.3.1 you icons are no longer “flattened” when you copy paste them, but you can now still change their colour and appearance, just as in the original.

The new version should automatically install in the background, or you can force the upgrade by visiting the SlideMagic app download link and pick your version for either Windows or Mac OSX.

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

I am uploading lots of slides now to SlideMagic everyday. Where possible, I create multiple layouts of slides, often depending on the underlying image I use. For example, see the juggler below.

There are lots of degrees of freedom:

• Image in a frame, or bleeding of the the page
• Line up text with the balls, or not
• Different colour options

As a SlideMagic user, you can pick one of these basic layouts and add or subtract boxes easily without messing up the overall of the slide.

Try it out for yourself, the search for juggler slidesis here. For the moment, I have made access to the entire slide database from within the desktop app free, so you can experiment with presentations in .magic format. PowerPoint conversion and/or downloads require a pro subscription.