For Trembling Hands (Office 12 Coolness, Part 2)

Last week
I started a new series of some of my favorite new features in Office 12. 
If you're curious what criteria I'm using to select them,
read Part 1.

Today's episode: You're standing up on stage in front of a thousand people who
have come to watch you talk.  The house dims, and the bright glare of stage
lighting burns down on you.  Nervous, with sweaty palms and shaking hands,
you prepare to start your presentation.  What will the audience think of
you?  Will they like what you have to say?  Have you prepared enough? 
Did you expect a larger audience?  Smaller?  Oh geez, I hope the demos
work...

Many of us have been there... up on stage, getting ready to present a PowerPoint
deck.  Or maybe in an important meeting with clients or potential
supporters
of your big idea.  You're probably presenting on a laptop with a TrackPoint
or a TrackPad.  These mouse substitutes are hard enough to use with great
precision in general; when nervous, they can be almost impossible to use.

All of these thoughts are going through your head, your hands are shaking, it's
tough enough to use a TrackPad anyway... and PowerPoint makes you click a tiny
12x12 button in the lower-left hand corner of the screen to start the
presentation. 

This is one of the only buttons in Office people regularly use under high
stress, and it's arguably the smallest, hardest to click button on the screen.

The Start Slide Show icon is so small that it can be tricky to click...

How many times have I watched nervous people fumble to hit the Start Slide Show
button?  I know I've done it myself many times.  When I'm on the spot
and people are waiting on me, I want the software to make me look good--not add
to my stress by starting me out on the wrong foot.

So, the simple Office 12 feature is this: the Ribbon in PowerPoint contains
large, easy to click buttons that make it easy to start your slide show from the
beginning or from a slide in the middle of the deck.  Each of the buttons
is thousands of pixels in size, easy to hit even with imprecise pointers, such as a TrackPoint or a
Tablet PC stylus.

An easy-to-click way to start your presentation (Click to view full picture)

This might seem like a small detail, and compared to many hundreds of other
improvements in Office 12, it is.  And it is true that, if you know about
them, there are other ways to start a slide show in Office 2003: press F5, or drop down the
Slide Show menu.  But small things do make a difference, and if we help
people have a higher level of confidence when starting a slide show, that's well
worth the effort.

I think this is a good illustration of how the freedom of layout and size
options provided by the Ribbon help us communicate what's important in a
program.  The right features can be made large and prominent, and others
can be made smaller to take up less space.

I know I'll appreciate this the next time I'm up on stage, hot lights bearing
down on my composure...

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  I was so happy to see the "show presentation on" dropdown when I followed you link above.
  
  I've never prepared and done 1 power point... in 1997; but because many people know I'm a programmer I've been dragged up to the front to try to fix (while everyone is watching me) other people's slide shows many times.
  
  Not being able to get it to show on the LCD projector is the #1 thing I'm asked to fix.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  What is that icon, anyway?
  
  Is it supposed to be a portable screen on a stand? For the longest time, I stared at it and all I could see was a toilet tank.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  I know about F5, but the trouble is it starts at the beginning, which isn't always what you want. Great feature.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Joe-
  
  Check out the Excel 12 Blog
  
  http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/default.aspx
  
  It has a bunch of posts about the changes to Conditinal Formatting. Look in the "Post Categories" on the right hand side.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Not to mention those whose hands tremple all the time.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Paul,
  SHIFT + f5 starts a slideshow at the current slide.
  
  Andy

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Andy: Really?! That's awesome! I use PowerPoint more than you'd believe for an Access dev and consider it a failure if I have to use the mouse to run or move through a presentation, but I didn't know about that handy feature. Just goes to show that you can always learn somethng new.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  I've always used F5 or View...Slidesho&w anyway. There's no sense in trying to hit a 16x16 icon, especially on a laptop's trackpad or thumb pointer. As another poster mentioned, though, doing it that way always starts the slideshow from the beginning.
  
  FYI: Shift + F5 isn't a valid keyboard shortcut for Office 2000 and earlier users...

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Of course, you do have to be on the Slide Show ribbon in order to see those buttons... so it's 2 clicks or 12x12, pick your poision :)

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2005
  Sherrod: "What is that icon, anyway?"
  
  Classic! I too have pondered that that same question for ages :)
  

• Anonymous
  December 07, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2005
  I too use the F5 and other shortcuts, and it always amazes me at how many people don't even know about F5. I am in eighth grade, and I have been promoted to soundboard runner in my sunday school class, just because I know all the shortcuts (Just a little sad).

• Anonymous
  December 13, 2005
  Serves you right if you've waited until everyone's seated and glaring at you before you fire up your presentation! First slide with title should be up and running before people even start arriving, so they know they've come to the right place...

• Anonymous
  December 15, 2005
  The comment has been removed

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