PowerPoint 2000

Basic Type

PowerPoint 2000 is primarily a page-based tool. The slide presentations created within the software are organized much like the pages of a book. You can link these pages into organized sequences, and the tool allows you to employ audio and visual elements as well.

You can make a PowerPoint 2000 presentation behave like a time-based tool. By setting the custom animation properties correctly, you can cause a presentation to run from beginning to end without any interaction from the user. Audio and visual elements can be made to occur at a given time or location in the sequence of events.

Editing Features

PowerPoint 2000 provides numerous different editing features to aid you in creating an effective multimedia presentation. You can select one of many theme backgrounds, and the color scheme on each background can be altered to create the look want. The tool offers several slide templates from which to choose, or you can customize the slide layout to suit your presentation's needs. Various fonts, styles, colors, and sizes allow you to create the text view you desire. Should you want to add images, sounds, or animations to your slide show, PowerPoint 2000 comes equipped with an ample amount of such objects categorized by topic for easy location. If you have a particular image or animation you want your presentation to contain, simply insert it at the appropriate spot. Once you've used these editing features to complete your slide show, you can customize its timing, effects, and flow to contain the degree of user interaction you want it to have.

Organizing Features

In order to view the overall content of your slide show, PowerPoint 2000 displays an outline to the left of your presentation template. This outline shows the number and text on each slide, and you can move to a particular slide in the template window by clicking on its text within the outline. A simple drag-and-place of a slide within the outline allows you rearrange the order of your slides quickly and easily.

The outline does not depict any information concerning the images, sounds, or animations within your presentation. The properties of these objects can be viewed and edited by clicking on them within the template window.

If you want to view all of your slides at once, you can select the Slide Sorter View for your presentation template.

Programming Features

PowerPoint 2000 offers visual programming for inserting sounds, images, and animations into your slide show. Pull-down menu options provide an easy means to either select a PowerPoint object or insert your own sound, image, or animation.

While creating your presentation, you may find yourself repeatedly completing a certain set of tasks. Instead of having to go through the steps of this task over and over again, you can create a macro to automate the task. According to the PowerPoint Help files, "a macro is a series of commands and functions that is stored in a Visual Basic for Applications module that's attached to the open presentation." By creating a macro, your set of tasks is reduced from many steps to only one.

Interactivity Features

Users can interact with PowerPoint 2000 on a simple branching level. During a presentation, you may be required to click the mouse or hit a key to progress to the next slide. However, some presentations involve no interaction at all. The author can set the animation options such that the presentation will run from beginning to end with no input from the mouse or keyboard.

Performance Tuning Features

To ensure that sounds occur at the correct time and text appears in the correct order, PowerPoint 2000 allows you to set the order and timing of your effects for each slide. To do this, you simply select the Custom Animation option from the Slide Show pull-down menu. Setting these options properly makes the presentation look the same regardless of the computer on which it is running.

Playback Features

To playback portions of your slide show as you are creating it, you can use the View Show option of the Slide Show pull-down menu. You can also view your show by clicking the Slide Show icon in the bottom left corner of the PowerPoint window.

Delivery Features

In order to run a PowerPoint 2000 presentation, you need to have PowerPoint 2000 installed on your computer.

Cross-Platform Features

PowerPoint 2000 is to be run on a Windows platform.

Price

$339.00

Evaluation

Overall, PowerPoint 2000 is an effective multimedia tool for its price. It is easy to learn, very user-friendly, and provides enough sounds, images, and animations to make an eye-catching presentation. Should you wish to use your own sounds or animations, you can always import them into your presentation. The drawback: if you want to include a movie, your end user must have the software to support that movie. PowerPoint 2000 will not provide that platform. However, PowerPoint 2000 is intended for those who have a message to portray in a noticeable fashion. Using this software tool allows you to portray such a message.