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iA Presenter: Text-based Presentation Editor with Automated Slide…

Recently, Information Architects released the beta version of iA Presenter. This is a presentation editor that uses the Markdown markup language. The idea was floating for some time, popping up from time to time in the presentation design threads’ comments. It seems that a worthy implementation has appeared.

What is Markdown?

© Information Architects, Inc.; Available at https://ia.net. It’s a text markup language, meaning you mark up your text, so the computer understands where the title is, where the italics are, where the footnote is, where the image reference is, etc. For example, a triple hyphen “---” means a new slide, and a “#” in front of the text makes it the title of the slide. The process is similar to super basic coding.

How it Works?

Let’s take the article “11 Essential Spices for Indian Cooking” by Michel Peter-Jones as an example and transfer it to slides. At first, it’s really weird, I want to go back to my native PowerPoint, with its maze of buttons, menus, submenus, sliders, and controls. But after five minutes, I am fascinated by the simplicity of the process and the elegance of the results. Note that the text under the title is not displayed on the slides; we will need it later.

User Interface

The interface of iA Presenter resembles Keynote. On the left are the slide thumbnails and, on the right, three tabs: Text, Visuals, and Design. The Text tab has buttons with tags for formatting, dividing into slides, etc. You can type it, or you can click the buttons. Visuals contains all the images and video links used in the presentation. You can put a logo on every slide. Design is analogous to Slide Master in PowerPoint or Slide Layouts in Keynote. Here, you set the parameters for the whole presentation: fonts, colours, template.

Slide Show

Here two windows appear: one with slides and one with auxiliary text, the same one that we added in the beginning. A kind of teleprompter.

Exporting

Another good thing: during the PDF export, you can choose the layout format. You can export into Markdown, PDF, and HTML. I especially like the latter. After all, you get a responsive version of the presentation, which you can upload to some GitHub Pages and enjoy. Look at the way it went.

A Paradigm Shift?

iA Presenter is an attempt to get away from what Angela R. Garber called “Death by PowerPoint” and Edward Tufty battled in his book “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”. As strange as it may seem, the tool has an impact on the result of the work. In the case of PowerPoint, the templates that go by default guide the author down a certain path. And it’s not always the best route, given PP’s love of bulleted lists, microscopic line spacing and shrinking font size depending on the amount of text. PowerPoint lets you create almost anything: graphic design, animation, games, fractals, books, strategies for useless state corporations, digital signage, three-dimensional graphics, screencasts, dashboards… It’s all primitive, with crutches, but it works. I never cease to admire the genius of this app—its versatility literally erases the boundaries for creativity. But sometimes just notes and illustrations are necessary. iA Presenter serves this purpose—you write down your thoughts, structure them, add illustrations, and present them. So you have three ways to reinforce your thought: text, illustration, and structure. This is also where the tool tries to guide your thinking.

Summary

I think an editor that allows you to “write” presentations will find an audience. I thoroughly enjoyed the minimalist process and thoughtful details. Especially for the beta version. Knowing IA’s approach, I’m sure the release will be honed to perfection. Download iA Presenter beta from the official site. It’s worth it. ～ #medium #2k22