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Comment by japhyr | Hacker News Reader

Well, you can actually build non-linear presentations in powerpoint.

I'm a high school teacher, and I had a rule for a while whenever students wanted to make powerpoint presentations. They had to build on-screen navigation into their presentation, just as if they were building a website. When they were giving their presentation, they had to use the on-screen navigation, instead of clicking forward and back. The navigation had to be semantic, it couldn't be just "next" and "previous".

Presentations were interesting, because people were free to interrupt with questions such as, "Your data seemed to show xyz, can you explain how your conclusion of abc really follows from your data?" Then students could click right over to the data part of their presentation, without flipping through all the slides in between.

Like most things, the problem is how a tool is used, not the tool itself.

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> Like most things, the problem is how a tool is used, not the tool itself.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that, and should have said that in my earlier comment. Thanks for bringing that up.

My problem is with the presentations, not with the tool itself.

However, I've never actually seen somebody give a non-linear PowerPoint presentation. TBH, I don't think very many people know how to do this. (including me -- but thanks for pointing this out, I will definitely spend some time figuring out how to do it).

This makes me wonder whether the problem with PowerPoint is that it makes it easy for people to be lazy with their presentations.

TBH, I don't think very many people know how to do this. (including me -- but thanks for pointing this out, I will definitely spend some time figuring out how to do it).

It's pretty straightforward. Simple approach:

- Make a textbox.

- Add a word for each page you want to link to.

- Highlight the word.

- Insert -> hyperlink -> Place in this document.

- Copy that textbox to every page.

Here's a simple example. I put it on github, because I don't use dropbox, and I haven't heard good things about slideshare.

https://github.com/ehmatthes/nonlinear_powerpoint

Does it still work when inherited from the master slide so it doesn't have to be copied? DRY and such..

For something with any interface you want, a tool being used incorrectly is a flaw in the tool itself. Unless you're going way out of your way to use it incorrectly.

That's a bit too broad. Someone holds a screwdriver incorrectly when screwing in a screw. The screw is slightly crooked because of the improper technique. Is the screwdriver fundamentally flawed because it allows the wielder to mess up? It's difficult for me to conceive something as portable, usable, cheap, and effective as the screwdriver, that does the same thing, and does not allow me to mess up. You have to make a sacrifice in some important category to get that. Programming languages can be pretty similar. Some are designed to make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but are far less popular (ADA is the example I'd use).

But if you'd seen hundreds of people use screwdrivers, and had only heard one anecdote about a correctly aligned screw in an online forum...

For a convincing (to me) argument against Powerpoint as the problem itself in poor presentations, see Edward Tufte's booklet/essay: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp

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