Power Point Interactive Kiosk

[tfoster]

I have a presentation that auto runs 1100 named images but the customer
would like for the presentation to be interactive so that anyone could
go directly to a slide. Even though right clicking the mouse will
bring up this option I do not want the other options (such as "End
Show", etc.). Also, after going to a slide that has already played the
presentation pauses and requires manual resume. I know nothing about
VBA, ActiveX, or Macro creation. are there any easy fixes to this
problem? Thanks. Terry

 

[Austin Myers]

Hyperlinks are your friend. <g> No need to write code really, you can
place an object (text, button, etc.) on a slide and then insert a hyperlink
on it that can take you to any slide in the presentation. Look at the help
information to get a good feel for how hyperlinks work.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I have a presentation that auto runs 1100 named images but the customer
would like for the presentation to be interactive so that anyone could
go directly to a slide. Even though right clicking the mouse will
bring up this option I do not want the other options (such as "End
Show", etc.). Also, after going to a slide that has already played the
presentation pauses and requires manual resume. I know nothing about
VBA, ActiveX, or Macro creation. are there any easy fixes to this
problem? Thanks. Terry

A question for you: how do you envision people choosing from among so many
images? A huge long scrolling list might be intimidating (and hard to use). A
single slide with lots of links force all the links to be so small as to be
unreadable. And PPT has a limit to the number of links it can handle; 1100
might put you over the top.

Can the images be categorized in some way? That is, could you start with a
main file with only a few links on the first slide: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Click Vegetable and it takes you to another presentation where the first slide
has links to e.g. various categories of veggies.

 

[Guest]

Take a look at:
http://www.pptmagic.com/articles/dynamicppt.htm

 

[tfoster]

It is 10 years of 4 different types of awards programs. Each slide is
titled by the persons name (their image) and states the award name and
has the company logo. They wanted the presentation to run on its own
with music until manually interupted. They want the ability for the
individual to go directly to the picture of the individual and then for
the presentation to continue after a few seconds. So the images may be
able to catagorized into 4 groups but total sort would have to be by
name. The interactivity is where I have the problem. Otherwise it
would be simple. Would appreciate any other response. Thanks

 

[tfoster]

The individual needs the ability to go to any of the other 1100 slides
by name.

 

[Austin Myers]

How in the world do you propose to offer 1100 possible choices? I mean at
some point your going to have to offer a list of some sort and the list will
be huge. I suppose you could have 26 hyperlinks, one for each letter in the
alphabet, and then branch again to the specific name but even then I think
you are going to run into PowerPoint's limitations.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

PowerPoint Video and PowerPoint Sound Solutions www.pfcmedia.com

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

It is 10 years of 4 different types of awards programs. Each slide is
titled by the persons name (their image) and states the award name and
has the company logo. They wanted the presentation to run on its own
with music until manually interupted. They want the ability for the
individual to go directly to the picture of the individual and then for
the presentation to continue after a few seconds. So the images may be
able to catagorized into 4 groups but total sort would have to be by
name. The interactivity is where I have the problem. Otherwise it
would be simple. Would appreciate any other response. Thanks

In that case, I imagine you're better off breaking it down by name.
Four groups of 250+ choices isn't that much better than 1100 choices, really.

But between that and the other requirements, you start running into PPT bugs.
As mentioned, that many links in one presentation may put you over the limit.
Some versions of PPT, I forget which but somebody will pipe up -- don't
reliably start self-running again after an inactivity timeout.

Now that our presentation linking wizard, Taj Simmons, is back on line, let's
see if he's got some suggestions for busting this thing up into several
presentations and still allowing the music to run.

 

[Echo S]

you over the limit. Some versions of PPT, I forget which but somebody
will pipe up -- don't reliably start self-running again after an
inactivity timeout.

2002. Kiosk mode reset after 5 minutes is broken in that version. Chirag
developed an add-in fix, but that won't work on a distributed presentation
unless the users all install his Kiosk Assistant add-in.
http://officeone.mvps.org I think is his URL.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

2002. Kiosk mode reset after 5 minutes is broken in that version. Chirag
developed an add-in fix, but that won't work on a distributed presentation
unless the users all install his Kiosk Assistant add-in.
http://officeone.mvps.org I think is his URL.

Thanks. That's the one I was scrabbling for.

 

[Guest]

As others have said, so many hyperlinks is awkward. Do you envision people
knowing the names so they could type them in (as in a search box), or do you
envision needing to look people up in some sort of directory/listing to get
the name? I think your first step is to clearly describe how you would LIKE
the interface to work, forgetting about any possible limitations in
PowerPoint. Your perfect vision may or may not be possible, but we can work
from there. Right now you have described a really tough
Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) problem. Separating the HCI problem from the
technical problems is the first step here.
--David

David Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[tfoster]

The criteria from the customer is as follows:
1. A kiosk running from a standard computer being displayed on a 50
High Definition LCD monitor (video 9 pin) that runs continuosly through
the slides. There is a room off the lobby area for awards display.
They want music playing in the background but I will probably run the
music separately in Windows media manager to reduce other potential
problems within PowerPoint.
2. Each slide will have the persons name, the individuals picture,
company logo, and the name and picture of one of four different type of
awards.
3. Interactive capability is needed to allow an individual to go to a
directory and select a name (each slide title is a persons name and in
the presentation will be in alphabetical order). Yes, they should know
the name.
4. The presentation needs to be automatically reset within a reasonable
time.
5. We selected PowerPoint because; a) The customer uses PowerPoint now
and can make changes to the presentation internally; b) Changes to the
presentation (additions) will be made on a regular basis; c) After
investigating other programs for different types of kiosk each also had
some form of considerable compromise or was cost prohibative and not in
the customers budget.

As I understand based on what I have read there are limitations with
interactivity using the "kiosk" mode. If I do not use this mode though
there are other issues. The presentation could be haulted or the
application could even be closed. Ideally I would like to eliminate
the keyboard and allow the end user to use only the mouse. As it is in
non-kiosk mode a person can right click the mouse and get a scrolling
alphabetical menu. If there were an on screen "Directory" button on
each slide that directed the individual to a hyperlink of a menu page
which had hyperlink buttons A through Z would this work or do you think
I would run into a PowerPoint limitation. Also, I have never performed
a hyperlink to multiple slides.

I am using version 2003 and the file will be loaded directly on the
computer driving the LCD monitor with a full version of PowerPoint.

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Thanks for the detailed clarification. I think that 1100 hyperlinks in
one presentation is going to push you against PowerPoint's limits. My
thought about "knowing the name" had to do with whether the name would be
typed or clicked. If the name can be typed, VBA would help you out. If
the name must be clicked, I'm afraid that you're still going to need 1100
hyperlinks.

Wait, here's a weird thought. What would happen if you have VBA create
the hyperlinks. This could happen after clicking on the letter of the
alphabet. That is if they click on A, VBA would generate a list of
hyperlinks to all the A slides. If the names are distributed evenly
throughout the alphabet, that would get you 40 hyperlinks at a time (well
within PowerPoint's range). With uneven distribution, no later would have
more than 150 hyperlinks, probably, still within PowerPoint's range.

Now, all you need is to find someone to code this monster and have Steve,
Shyam, Austin, etc. confirm that it actually has a chance of working.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for the detailed clarification. I think that 1100 hyperlinks in
one presentation is going to push you against PowerPoint's limits. My
thought about "knowing the name" had to do with whether the name would be
typed or clicked. If the name can be typed, VBA would help you out. If
the name must be clicked, I'm afraid that you're still going to need 1100
hyperlinks.

Maybe not. Suppose on startup you iterate the slides and pick up a known bit
of text, say the title. The client has been trained to put the award winner's
name in the title. You add these to an array along with the slideID and sort
them.

Now: user clicks on a "Directory" button, gets taken to a slide that has 26
links, one for each letter of the alphabet. They click the one they want, that
passes the letter as a param to a routine that loads a listbox with only the
names beginning with that letter.

User clicks the desired name, go to the associated SlideID.
Or even simpler, the startup routine could name each slide after the name in
the Title, so it's a matter of going to ActivePresentation.Slides("Fred Jones")

Now we use Sleep to make the macro leave us alone for the desired amount of
time and finally (because we cleverly picked up the original slide number way
back when the user clicked on the Directory button) we return to our regularly
scheduled programming, at the same point where we left off.

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Sounds great. Should the original poster contact you to discuss your
terms for writing this for him?
--David

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

To the Original Poster:

Several people in this group (including Steve, I think, but not including
me) do consulting, but they would not advertise on the list. I'm sure
lots of us would be happy to give you advice if you want to try to write
this yourself, but you might want to look into some of the VBA experts in
the group if you have a budget for a consultant because this is a bit
beyond beginning VBA skills.

--David

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Sounds great. Should the original poster contact you to discuss your
terms for writing this for him?

Good point. Kind of tacky to lay out the room then not leave any clues about
where to buy the furniture. <g>

Yes, I'd be happy to consult on this one.

steve at-sign pptools dot com