
Ask HN: What alternatives to Powerpoint/Prezi are there? - altoz
I&#x27;m doing a lot of teaching and I&#x27;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&#x27;t able to do a lot of what I&#x27;m looking for (no path editing, no infinite canvas, etc). What alternatives are there?<p>Some requirements for me:<p>* WYSIWIG editor
* Tutorials
* Infinite canvas&#x2F;Path editing
======
confounded
[https://slides.com/](https://slides.com/)

Is a commercial SaaS GUI for reveal.js: [http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-
js/#/](http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/)

I’m a paying customer, and find it useful. Where possible, I create slides
using standard open source reveal.js (or often some markdown format that
compiles to it) but sometimes I’ll want to do something that’s easier with a
GUI, or just run out of time/interest for _design-from-the-command-line_.

It’s easy to export decks to HTML, and the auto-generated code is pretty clean
and sane, as these things go.

Additionally, the CEO of the company is the maintainer of reveal.js, so buying
the product saustains his work in the open source library. You can also write
to him with bugs and requests, he’s keen to listen and responsive. Thanks,
Hakim!

~~~
sleazebreeze
I'm a huge fan of reveal.js. Everytime I've used it, people ask what I used to
make the slides.

------
veli_joza
Is anyone thinking beyond slides? We need to demand more from our
presentational tools. I'd like to have these features:

Interactive slide elements like simulations, parametrized graphs, shells for
SSH and interpreted languages.

Mobile interface served for audience so they can participate in quizzes,
voting and interactive experiments.

Branching flows of presentation, so you can dive into more details on one
branch, or skim through it on other branch (without running through slides
franticly).

Free style presentation where some presenter zooms in and out of tree
representation of our knowledge of the presentation subject.

Support for separate presenter's user interface - presenter should be able to
easily cue the laughing track, or theatrically raise music volume, or see
audience feedback.

Both Prezi and reveal.js and some other tools I've seen, add too much design
fluff and fail to deliver any fresh approach. PowerPoint is stagnating for a
looong while. Which is really the shame, because we could engage our audience
so much better with right tools.

~~~
binxbolling
You've just described Articulate Storyline and/or Adobe Captivate.

------
danieldk
org-mode with beamer output. For me there are a couple of large benefits:

\- You can include LaTeX directly in documents and preview LaTeX inline in
Emacs. This is not restricted to LaTeX math, but any kind of LaTeX
environment. I often use this for including TikZ figures.

\- You can include snippets of code in your document, execute them inline and
include the results in your presentation. For instance, you can use this to
include graphs using gnuplot, R, or matplotlib. Moreover, you can use tables
org-mode tables as input to these code fragments.

\- You can use tags for headers/slides. I often use this to generate two
different slide decks: one that I put on the website before the lecture and a
second one with solutions for me to use during the lecture.

\- org-mode is a markup language that is similar to Markdown, so it is
generally less work to write than LaTeX.

\- Like LaTeX and Markdown, you can put everything under version control.

~~~
xelxebar
Whoa. That sounds divine. Not trying to start a war here, but is there a way
to do this kind of thing in vim? I've heard about evil move and spacemacs but
never looked into either all that much.

~~~
danieldk
I don't think there is currently something as extensive as org-mode in vim.
vim can also not render equations/figures inline.

evil is a pretty good vi. I have been a vim user for ~two decades. I used
Spacemacs as the gateway drug to Emacs, but have since built my own
configuration from scratch (I was fed up with the general slowness of
Spacemacs).

------
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.

------
Jarwain
After some googling, I found out how one can enable Prezi classic on an
account that only has Prezi Next.

Make sure you're logged into your Prezi account, then go to this link:
[https://prezi.com/instant-prezi](https://prezi.com/instant-prezi) An editor
or a 404 page may appear. Either way, Prezi classic is now enabled. You can
access your dashboard again on the top right and switch between the two
products in a drop down on the left.

Source: [https://prezibase.com/activate-prezi-classic-
account/](https://prezibase.com/activate-prezi-classic-account/)

------
marcolussetti
If you're demonstrating any code, I find RISE to be magnificent. It's a plugin
for Jupyter Notebooks that lets you present your code via reveal.js

Project:
[https://github.com/damianavila/RISE](https://github.com/damianavila/RISE)
Original demo at PyCon:
[https://youtu.be/rBS6hmiK-H8](https://youtu.be/rBS6hmiK-H8)

------
minimaxir
Keynote for iCloud (the web-based version of iWork's Keynote) has close-to-
feature-parity with the macOS/iOS versions.

Additionally, Keynote Live allows you to play a presentation and have viewers
join via a URL, where they can view the presentation in sync on any device
(macOS/iOS/Web), with feature parity to normal Keynote presentations.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206205](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT206205)

------
massaman_yams
I don't know if this satisfies your infinite canvas requirement, but I've used
[https://slides.com/](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](https://github.com/bigsense/presentations)

------
Jaepa
Spectacle is pretty nice. Supports 3rd party extensions. Supports markdown.
Split presenter and presentation views. Themes.

[https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle)

------
LarryMade2
How about Sozi? its an extension for inkscape -
[http://sozi.baierouge.fr/](http://sozi.baierouge.fr/)

~~~
seltzered_
This is pretty fascinating, the about page sums it up
[http://sozi.baierouge.fr/pages/10-about.html](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

------
constexpr
Figma ([https://www.figma.com](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?

------
Ruud-v-A
While it does not solve your use case, others here might find it interesting:
I built a domain-specific language for designing slides
([https://github.com/ruuda/pris#readme](https://github.com/ruuda/pris#readme)).
It is superficially similar to LaTeX/Beamer/TikZ, but it has first-class
graphics that are reusable. More motivation in this blog post:
[https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2017/04/27/a-language-for-
desig...](https://ruudvanasseldonk.com/2017/04/27/a-language-for-designing-
slides). It is still basic, but I have used it a few times to do slides
nonetheless.

------
sridvijay
I remember seeing this on product hunt a while back and it looks awesome:
[https://ludus.one/?ref=producthunt](https://ludus.one/?ref=producthunt)

~~~
dorianvanbever
did you test it? how is it?

------
josephernest
BigPicture might be what you're looking for:
[http://bigpicture.bi/demo](http://bigpicture.bi/demo)

* Infinite canvas

* Infinite zooming

* WYSIWIG

* Demo

* Opensource: [https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js](https://github.com/josephernest/bigpicture.js)

If you zoom on some vegetables here
[http://bigpicture.bi/Legumes](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 ;)

~~~
lookACamel
What about sketchboard.io?

------
twiss
There's Strut, which is WYSIWIG and has path editing:
[http://strut.io/](http://strut.io/)

I'm running a fork with some very minor improvements at
[https://www.airbornos.com/demo#open=strut](https://www.airbornos.com/demo#open=strut).
If you make an account there, they're saved in the cloud.

------
ron07
If you want LaTex, then take a look at this tool @ LucidChart LaTex support-
[https://store.office.com/en-
ca/app.aspx?assetid=WA104380118&...](https://store.office.com/en-
ca/app.aspx?assetid=WA104380118&sourcecorrid=095ef28a-a06c-4e6a-8396-6900a894e26d&searchapppos=5&ui=en-
US&rs=en-CA&ad=CA&appredirect=false) \- Word (free & paid) Lucidchart is an
HTML5-based visual collaboration tool that makes drawing diagrams fast and
easy. Easily create and insert flowcharts and other diagrams in Office
documents. One of the supported “chart types” is LaTex equations.

I've only played with it a little and was really impressed.

I've been reading about Tableau, have not tried it
[http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/tableau/](http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/tableau/)

How about Sway? It is still very much in development. And the last I heard it
has one serious shortcoming. The sway files must stay on the internet,no
downloading. (that may have been fixed ...?)

Office Sway is a presentation program and is part of the Microsoft Office
family of products. Generally released by Microsoft in August 2015, Sway
allows users who have a Microsoft account to combine text and media to create
a presentable website. Users can pull content locally from the device in use,
or from internet sources such as Bing, Facebook, OneDrive, and YouTube. More
at "Wikipedia"

Take a look at Ellen Finkelsteins site. She does some amazing stuff with
PowerPoint
[http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/](http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/)
\- Ellen Finkelstein is a PowerPoint MVP

[http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Hidden_pivots.html](http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/Hidden_pivots.html)

------
jd3
[https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present)

------
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.

------
OJFord
\latex with beamer.

------
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.

------
ron07
Have you looked at MS Mix? [https://mix.office.com/en-
us/Home](https://mix.office.com/en-us/Home)

Since you talk about teaching, are you aware of the MS Education offering? It
includes subsites specific for teachers. That would be a good place to ask
your question

OFFICE 365 EDUCATION / STUDENT ADVANTAGE - LEARN
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/education) This is home site for ongoing contact/training/features of
Office 365 Education for: • School leaders • Educators • Students • Products •
Training & Events • Stories • How to Buy

[https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-
educatio...](https://products.office.com/en-us/student/office-in-education) \-
Home Page / FAQ Check if you can get Microsoft Office for free by trying out
your valid school email address at the Office for Students page.
[https://products.office.com/en-
us/academic/office-365-educat...](https://products.office.com/en-
us/academic/office-365-education-plan#ProplusQuestion) – Describes the
Education plan and how to get it [https://products.office.com/en-
us/academic/office-365-educat...](https://products.office.com/en-
us/academic/office-365-education-plan) \- Home page

------
BeetleB
Org Mode + Beamer (a LaTeX package).

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

------
cher14
Hope you take a look at [https://www.breakdown-
notes.com](https://www.breakdown-notes.com)

It has a pretty big map (though not infinite) for you to add shapes and text
to, has support for adding and editing paths, plenty of tutorials and you can
make slides in the paid version (free 2 week trial). Disclaimer: I made
Breakdown Notes

------
vram22
As others have said in this thread, reveal.js is good. I've used it via
slides.com where I put an overview presentation about my xtopdf Python toolkit
for PDF generation from other formats:

[http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf](http://slides.com/vasudevram/xtopdf)

S5 by Eric Meyer is good too - web-based, uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript:

[https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/](https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/)

Online S5 intro / demo using S5 itself:

[https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html](https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html)

Edit:

Sorry, missed seeing your requirements for the tool, not sure if S5 has them,
but leaving my comment up since I think S5 is interesting and definitely a
presentation tool.

------
duality
Google Slides ([https://slides.google.com](https://slides.google.com))

------
geraldbauer
I've put together Slide Show (S9) [1] that lets you use plain text with
markdown formatting convetions for putting together your slides / talks. Incl.
a starter tutorial / repo. For infinite canvas (prezi-style) you can use the
impress.js theme/template pack [2], for example. For wysiwig use your (visual)
markdown editor of choice :-)

[1] [http://slideshow-s9.github.io](http://slideshow-s9.github.io) [2]
[https://github.com/slideshow-templates/slideshow-
impress.js](https://github.com/slideshow-templates/slideshow-impress.js)

------
andrepd
If you're familiar with LaTeX, Beamer is an option for scientific/math slides.

------
ron07
Some more ideas: POWER-USER – EURO 200 (FREE TRIAL)
[https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/](https://www.powerusersoftwares.com/)
With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in for Microsoft
PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process of creating a
presentation. With dozens of features, Power-user is the most complete add-in
for Microsoft PowerPoint, designed to assist you in every step of the process
of creating a presentation.

------
burnerOh2125
Here's a radical thought: don't use a presentation deck! Hand out a collection
of images, printed or via pdf file, give the student a couple of minutes to
quickly become familiar with it, then just talk about each of the major figure
in the handout. This was my solution to 'powerpoint hell' when sharing results
in grad school, I don't know if it really applies to your case (non-expert
students), but it may be worth a shot. Hell, its better than reading off
slides! Good luck!

------
dahart
Lucidchart has a slides/presentation mode, along with mind maps, a wysiwig
editor, tutorials, and an infinite canvas.

(Disclaimer, I used to work there, and helped build the presentation mode.)

------
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](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.

------
rnhmjoj
[http://impress.github.io/impress.js](http://impress.github.io/impress.js)

~~~
frantzmiccoli
If some people are still using impress I am dropping this small library I made
a few years ago.

[http://frantzmiccoli.github.io/Chillin.js](http://frantzmiccoli.github.io/Chillin.js)

~~~
aw3c2
That is so annoyingly slow that I closed the tab after "completing" the first
2 slides.

------
atsaloli
I just started using GitPitch.com which is backed by reveal.js It integrates
seemlessly with GitHub, GitLab, etc. Feed it markdown and graphics and it
produces beautiful slideshows. The author is incredibly responsive (I just
commented on a feature I needed and it was done in < 12 hours and done right).
Freakin' amazing!

------
1337biz
I work in Powerpointing and even Prezi is just too obscure for most of our
clients. Nobody wants to learn a new tool or download anything just because
the new tool has a few silly layout improvements. But if you don't need others
to work with it, it probably doesn't really matter.

------
wannacry2017
I recently discovered Vizzlo ([https://vizzlo.com](https://vizzlo.com)). Those
guys are going to develop smart templates for all common concept charts.
Pretty fast, pretty slick. Basically, the opposite of Prezi but worth a trial.

------
eminetto
Deckset is awesome. Markdown is easy to write and Deckset can export to PDF.
It’s my choice nowadays

------
seltzered_
[https://infinitekind.com/syncspace](https://infinitekind.com/syncspace) is an
infinite canvas app, though I’m not sure how well it works for
sharing/teaching usecases

------
senko
Crosses some reqs (tho doesn't have full features object editing), handy if
you want interactive presentations [https://awwapp.com/](https://awwapp.com/)

------
f_allwein
Take a look at [https://www.mindmeister.com](https://www.mindmeister.com) \-
it is mainly for mind maps (and is very good at that), but also has a
presentation mode.

------
twovi
I use Marp, quick and dirty. But it allows for Markdown to PDF presentations.

------
vfulco
Reveal.js used with R's version of markdown makes for a really nice setup.
Fully contained html if you want, online/offline. Lot of support from
community and slick features.

------
jgent
[https://tiled.co](https://tiled.co)

We've built Tiled to be a versatile presentation tool with a focus on
interactivity and analytics.

------
llacb47
Open source JSON editor:
[https://github.com/tantaman/Strut](https://github.com/tantaman/Strut)

------
gjayakrishnan
Try Zoho Show.
[https://www.zoho.com/docs/show.html](https://www.zoho.com/docs/show.html)

------
analog31
A jupyter to power point converter would be huge. I work in a typical
organization where power point is expected, but my results come out of
jupyter.

------
orliesaurus
Can someone care to explain what infinite canvas means

~~~
mcphage
Your canvas isn't limited to the screen size or any other fixed size, instead
you can keep adding things on all four sized forever.

------
jasonlotito
PowerPoint can still replicate a lot of what you are looking for. Look into
Morph. Granted, I prefer Keynote and Magic Move for this.

------
vinch
You should give a try to Ludus --> [https://ludus.one](https://ludus.one)

------
JoBrad
Sway is good. Very different than PowerPoint.

[https://sway.com/](https://sway.com/)

------
Dowwie
just created an awesome repo for presentation libraries as there doesn't seem
to be one yet: [https://github.com/Dowwie/awesome-presentation-
libs](https://github.com/Dowwie/awesome-presentation-libs)

------
kim0
reveal-md if you like markdown!

------
nrjames
I think you can make presentations with Omnigraffle, which has an infinite
canvas.

------
aquamo
Emacs org-mode w/Beamer or reveal.js export.

------
probinso
beamer, marp

------
mankash666
Reveal-MD: write in markdown, compile/output a good looking reveal-js HTML
presentation.

Demo: [https://mankash.bitbucket.io](https://mankash.bitbucket.io) Reveal-MD
source: [https://github.com/webpro/reveal-
md](https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md)

------
Numberwang
reveal.js wins every time.

~~~
zeger
Yep was going to say Reveal.js too. Earlier today someone posted an
integration of Jupyter Notebooks with Reveal.js which looks pretty cool.
[https://github.com/datitran/jupyter2slides](https://github.com/datitran/jupyter2slides)

