Chapter 12. Creating Presentations and Slideshows

Presentations and slideshows are two common types of applications that people want to be able to create. Presentations are used at business meetings, demonstrations, and conferences; they allow the user to organize information and present it in a visual manner. Slideshows can be used in much the same manner, but typically a slideshow automatically advances from one slide to the next, whereas a presentation is controlled by the presenter. You can use a slideshow to allow clients to see images of products or to show off your vacation photos.

There are plenty of programs on the market that allow you create presentations and slideshows. For example, Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular product that is specifically for the purpose of creating presentations. And Adobe Acrobat allows you to create slideshows. So why would you want to use Flash to create presentations and/or slideshows? There are many good reasons why Flash can be a good choice for creating these types of applications, including these:

• Flash provides many more options for a richer-looking product. You can incorporate images, text, animations, and nice transitions without having to using extra programs or rely on a built-in, predefined set of clip art.

• Presumably, if you are reading this book, you already own a copy of Flash. You may or may not own a copy of another program for creating presentations and slideshows.

• The Flash player has a very large distribution. That means that if you want to publish your presentation for others to view, Flash is a good choice.

• If you are already familiar with Flash, but not yet familiar with another application, Flash enables you to avoid the learning curve associated with learning a new program.

Although Flash can be a great way to create presentations and slideshows, it was previously less accessible to many people than something like PowerPoint. Flash didn't really provide a very convenient way to author such things without knowing quite a bit of ActionScript. However, with this book, your job just got a whole lot easier. In this chapter, you'll see three primary ways you can create presentations and slideshows:

• Templates built into Flash

• A Flash slide presentation

• Flash 8 Cookbook components

Each of these techniques has particular advantages and disadvantages. The following table should help you to determine which options make the most sense for you.

Table 12-1.

	Template	Slide presentation	Component
Available in both Flash Basic and Flash Professional?	Yes	No, Professional only	Yes
Allows for transition effects?	No	Yes	Yes
Allows you to conveniently add a timer to auto-advance slides without adding ActionScript?	Yes	No	Yes
Allows you to automatically load external JPEG files without having to add any extra ActionScript?	No	No	Yes
Allows you to customize the look of the controllers?	Depends on the template. For presentation templates, yes. For slideshow templates, no.	Yes	Yes

All Flash 8 Cookbook components can be found at .