In the post-COVID world where so much is done remotely I’m utterly amazed with the absence of a decent app for making slides. I recently went through a long and honestly very disappointing journey for finding the one and only app that fits my needs. And… yeah… there is none. Here are the requirements I have, and I can elaborate more on why exactly I need each of these. So, my perfect presentation making must:
- have interactive UI, where you can drag elements around with your mouse/trackpad;
- support dragging and dropping images AND videos and repositioning them;
- support latex (or at least something similar);
- work on all major OS-s: windows/macos/linux.
That’s it. That’s all I need. Nothing more, nothing less. I’m even willing to pay money to have the app (not as a subscription though)!
I admit that my needs might not be the most common ones, but I also don’t think they’re totally unreasonable.
Here are the apps/frameworks I tried, and where they succeeded and failed (all graded on the scale of 5), starting from the most popular ones.
(a) Microsoft PowerPoint (4.0/5):
+ (4/5) has nice interactive UI and allows for good configurability;
+ (5/5) supports all the major video encodings as well as images and GIFs;
? (4/5) does not support latex, but kinda has its own equation engine which is good-enough;
− (3/5) has no linux counterpart;
− comes bundled with the Office Suite, the majority of apps from which I’ve never used.
(b) Keynote (3.9/5):
+ (4.5/5) has by far the best UI and the collection of tools (perhaps the only thing it lacks is the ability to crop videos);
+ (5/5) same as PowerPoint, supports most of the formats that I typically use;
+ (5/5) has full support for latex equations;
− (1/5) no windows and no linux implementation;
− Mac-only, and the cloud version doesn’t support most of the functionality – so really, fuck you Apple.
(c) Google Slides (2.5/5):
+ (3/5) has a decent UI, but oftentimes feels very clumsy with the overly padded bounding boxes;
? (2/5) supports images and gifs, but fails miserably with videos, which it’s only able to embed over youtube (or google drive);
− (0/5) no latex support, although I’m aware that some paid plugins allow for it;
+ (4/5) it’s web-based, so works essentially on any platform;
− obviously, because it’s web-based, you can’t do anything offline.
(d) LaTeX Beamer (3.3/5):
− (0/5) no UI at all, and getting things line just right is quite a headache;
? (3/5) getting videos is kind of a nightmare really, as it compiles into a pdf, and not all pdf engines support videos;
+ (5/5) no comment;
+ (5/5) no comment, although you have to install an 8 GB-worth latex suite on your system, or do it on a website like overleaf.
(e) LibreOffice Impress (3.3/5):
+ (3/5) the UI is very reminescent of the Google Slides, so is kinda clumsy, although you can get used to it I guess;
+ (4/5) kinda of supports all the major image/video formats, but I’ve had trouble with some of the encodings;
− (1/5) no latex (although third-party plugins can enable it, but they never really worked well for me);
+ (5/5) supported no all major OS-s.
(f) Marp/Slippr/Cafe-Pitch/Reveal.js (3.5/5):
− (0/5) no UI;
+ (5/5) because they all use js-based engine (like electron), you can make any format work with them;
+ (4/5) same here, although some don’t have latex out of the box, it’s relatively straightforward to enable a MathJax or Katex support;
+ (5/5) takes some npm magin, but you can run it on frigging toaster.
(g) Slides.com (3.5/5):
+ (4/5) it basically uses the proprietary version of the reveal.js as a backend, and adds UI (a bit clumsy to my taste, but works ok);
− (2/5) same as above, but adding videos is paywalled;
+ (5/5) there is a full latex support out of the box;
+ (3/5) web-based, but you’ll need an account, and lots of perks are paywalled.
(h) Figma (3.3/5):
+ (5/5) surprisingly good UI (it was made for vector design, so not surprising);
− (2/5) videos paywalled;
+ (3/5) some plugins add latex support, but still quite clumsy;
+ (3/5) has an app and offers a cloud-based web app, but you need to have an account etc.
I also tried other things, like Wolfram Mathematica (yes it can do presentations, although equations look kinda weird), Adobe Illustrator/Inkscape (i mean, why not at this point?), Prezi.com (more fancy, less functional). There are tons of web-based solution (e.g., visme), most of which have a subscription program, which I am not willing to try (I’m ready to pay once, but subscription programs go against my mental stability).
It seems that any solution I try falls short of what I would consider a pretty reasonable list of requirements. At this point I’m mostly using MS PowerPoint, but its lack of linux support really drives me mad. I’m interested to hear your thoughts and your experiences with presentation-making software? What are some of things I should try?
Considering the community we’re in, it’s odd that there’s not a bigger dealbreaker (mostly kidding, all my job software is proprietary and I just have to suck it up). With the dawn of Office online, the OS shouldn’t really an issue anymore, or does the online version lack features you need?
That’s how they get you. You’re already paying $X for them, might as well use them. Now that you’re used to them, it’s hard to justify switching to a different app with an entirely new workflow that may not even have all the features you want.
Not much, but I have used PowerPoint to make the most basic of presentations. It’s fine.
I’ve used all the other popular LibreOffice alternatives (Writer, Calc, Draw). Based on ny experience with Draw (and the UI of all), I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that in general LO is good at handling data and text, and not so great/easy-to-use with graphics.
As for your requirements, 1+2 are very reasonable, almost given for a presentation software—although the videos may narrow down your pool.
3 is where things get uncommon; wanna know how I know you work in STEM? Actually, given that you’re clearly making presentations often, and can work remotely, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess: professor? Then again, you clearly don’t shy away from learning computer nerdery and trying new software (incl. Linux), so you might be an engineer who just happens to give a lot of presentations instead.
Back on topic: 3 should be more specific. My understanding of LaTeX is that it’s basically a fully-fledged publishing software on its own… or rather, a standard language that publishing softwares can use, similar to how MS Office uses XML behind the scenes everywhere. Your requirement is basically that the software use a specific format for displaying stuff on screen, but the context suggests you just want LaTeX because it supports autoformatting of math equations. Surely most presentation softwares have some way of achieving that without having a full-on LaTeX rendering engine included. I’m guessing you’ve already tried good ol’
Insert>Object>Formulaor using LibreOffice’s Math to create what you want before copying it to Impress?Lastly 4 is a doozy. It seems like such a simple request to the non-devs. The unfortunate truth is that for anything more complex than a “Hello World,” the program requires multiple pathways to access system libraries and hardware resources, and even then taking into consideration limitations and idiosyncrasies of different hardware architectures. It’s not as simple as adding a flag to your compiler. For Mac and Windows that’s not an issue because they’re getting paid to port and they get more money for doing so, there’s financial incentive. For linux devs… Well…
There are two types of Linux devs: the majority, who contribute for fun and donations, do what they do because it helps them achieve their goals and might as well share, or they just genuinely care about giving back to the community. The other type, who there’s less of, are the ones who do it for work. They do it because there’s a niche customer base who use their software professionally and for specific industry applications; that’s where companies like Red Hat come into play. It’s rare that you find offerings for more general types of software, like entire office suites.
In other words, we’re lucky to have LibreOffice (and any web apps, which have the luxury of being OS agnostic). You want another miracle???