Windows

SUPERSHOW PRESENTATION

This page shows you how easy it is to prepare a slideshow for public presentation,
using tools available at this site.

THE SUPERSHOW PLUS METHOD IN A NUTSHELL

PREPARATION:

1. Make your slideshow in the form of web pages (program WebEd 4).

2. Capture the web pages in the form of images (program Web2Pic).

PRESENTATION:

3. Run your slideshow from a pendrive (program SuperShow Plus).

WebEd 4

Download and install the Google Chrome browser if you do not have it already (click HERE for the Portable edition).
It is required for the online WebEd 4 program at:

http://www.howsoft.com/browserapps/webed4/

Instructions for usage are in the program's HELP menu.

Web2Pic

Download it HERE.
See the link for full operating instructions on the downloads page.

SuperShow Plus

HARDWARE REQUIRED

You will need a pendrive to transport
your slideshow (i.e. pictures + the portable
program** "SuperShow Plus") to the place
of presentation.

You will, of course, be supplied with a
Windows computer, or you will be taking
your own.

[** A "portable" program is one not requiring
installation, even if you run it on a computer
which is not your own. Just find the program
"SuperShow Plus" on the pendrive, and
double-click on it to execute.]

A projector will normally be supplied at
the place of presentation. No specific
characteristics are required for your
SuperShow Plus slideshow.

If you don't already possess a wireless
mouse with a good range, get yourself
one ASAP!

Apart from being useful generally, you
will need it in your slideshow to pass
from slide to slide at a distance from
the computer.

Don't forget to take it with you to the place
of presentation!

(If they offer you a "presenter" device for
this purpose, it is not necessary.)

1. MAKING THE WEB PAGES

Here is a screenshot of the "WebEd 4" online program that you will be using to make your slides:

To begin, create a picture widget by clicking on the "NEW: Picture" button at the top.
Then double-click on it to load a background image of size 994x738 pixels.
You will find a number of background pictures of this size in the "Supershow Presentation Graphics" pack that you can download.
Or you can make your own 994x738 background.

When loaded, drag the background picture into the top left-hand corner (position 0,0) of the grid.

(As you will see in the WebEd 4 Help, you do this as follows:

1. Choose the "Snap to Grid" option.
2. Right-click the widget to put it into "move mode".
3. Click down on the widget (left mouse button) and drag it into the corner. then release the left mouse button.
It should then snap correctly into position (0,0).
4. Click down (left mouse button) on a part of the grid which is OUTSIDE the widget picture to turn off "move mode".)

This background picture now serves as a "guide template" to make sure that you do not design pages greater than 994x738 pixels, so whatever
text or picture widgets you draw subsequently, they need to be within its limits.

(The reason for the odd number of pixels is the fact that when you finally display these pages in the Supershow Plus Presentation, the program itself
displays the pages with a border of 15 pixels all around them, so you need to reduce the width and height by 2x15 = 30 pixels. The "standard" size of a
slide then becomes (1024 - 30) x (768 - 30) pixels.)

You are now free to use the "New:Picture" and "New:Text" buttons to create the widgets required for your page. Once created, you will want to give them
their contents (i.e. images and texts). You will also want to move them around, and in the case of texts you will want to resize them. If you look in the
HELP/Mini-Help menu, you will find a summary of how these operations can be achieved.

As you are working, it is a good idea to save your new web page quite frequently, to prevent any potential loss of time and energy!

2. CONVERTING YOUR WEB PAGES TO IMAGES

Make sure the web pages for your presentation are collected together in the same folder.
Also, you will need to create an empty folder to contain the output images that are captured from the web pages:

Now open up the "Web2Pic" program and navigate to the input and output folders to inform it of where it is to get the web pages and to where it needs to
write the picture images:

Make sure you have chosen the "For Supershow Presentation" option for the output size, and then click on the "Go!" button.

Before displaying the first web page, the program will complain about a script error:

Don´t worry about it. Just click on "Sim", or "Yes", or whatever button enables you to accept the "error" in your language. It is not an error really.

(The reason for this is that the current version of the programming system used to create "Web2Pic" makes use of Internet Explorer to display the web page: a
policy to be avoided at all costs! Future versions of the programming system (LiveCode) will not provoke this "pseudo error".)

Next, the image of the first web page will be captured, and it will pause before attempting to capture the image of the next page:

The above sequence will be repeated for all the web pages in your folder.
Finally, a message will tell the that the processing is complete. Clicking on the "OK" button will close the program:

3. PREPARING YOUR SLIDESHOW ON A PENDRIVE

Copy the program "Supershow PLUS" to a folder on the pendrive you intend to use for your presentation.
Then copy the captured images to it:

Execute the Supershow on the pendrive, and then move the mouse to the extreme left hand side of the screen.
This will reveal the Options flap:

Make sure the stretching option is turned off, not only now, but during your presentation.

Now get your wireless mouse and walk a good distance away from the computer.
Use the right and left buttons to navigate to the next/previous slide in your presentation.

Make sure that the sequence is correct, as determined by the alphabetic names of the picture slides.
If not, change the slide names to get them into the correct order.

That's it!
This is how you will give your presentation, but with a projector attached to the computer.

Depending on the projector, you might find that the computer's screen resolution is set, for example, to
1024x768 pixels. To get a better idea of how this would look in practice, you can close the Supershow,
change the resolution of your computer to e.g. 1024x768 ** , and then execute Supershow from your
pendrive once more.

[** You can usually do this by right-clicking the mouse on the desktop, and then choosing "Screen
Resolution" from the popup menu.]

This is what it would look like in full size:

If you like, you can put a coloured border around the slides (red above). See the Options flap again in the Supershow PLUS program.

Finally, if you need any further help with the operation of the slideshow, for example how to hop around from one slide to another, you can get to the
Internet Help by moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen to reveal the bottom flap, and then clicking on the "Help" button:

Well, that's more or less it, I think.
Happy presentations!

THE METHOD AND WHO IT IS FOR

If you are a skilled professional who is highly Photoshop-savvy and familiar with all the resources of Microsoft Powerpoint, it is possible that the method
outlined here will be of little interest to you. However, you might see some advantage of using your Photoshop skills directly to produce images that can
be introduced into the presentation program (Supershow Plus), and use that instead of Powerpoint.

Most of us do not possess great skills in either Photoshop or Powerpoint. We are perhaps busy professionals in fields other than the arts or marketing,
etc. Moreover, we only need to prepare public presentations on a very sporadic basis, and by the time we prepare the next presentation, we have forgotten
most of what we learned preparing the previous one! Furthermore, we do not need to produce anything sophisticated. We just need to make a slideshow
which is reasonably attractive, to pass across information in a simple, clear and concise fashion.

If you belong to "the rest of us" category described above, it is hoped that the Supershow method of presentation will be of help to you, as described in
the 3 steps given below.

If on the other hand you are already a pro, you can ignore the first 2 steps of the preparation, using Photoshop instead, and go straight to step 3 (the
use of Supershow Plus to give the presentation). To do this, you just need to remember one thing. The slides you produce must have the following
dimensions: