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Cross Platform PowerPoint - Windows, Macintosh
by Geetesh Bajaj
...Continued from Page 2
7. Movies
8. Movie Export
9. ActiveX and Flash
Export
10. Other Issues
Continued on Page 4...
7. Movies
PowerPoint on the Mac
works smoothly with
QuickTime movie files. You
can insert both QuickTime
(MOV) movies and
Quicktime Virtual Reality
(QTVR) files natively. Not
surprisingly, QuickTime files (even sound) don’t
work in the Windows versions of
PowerPoint. In fact,
PowerPoint on Windows
has all but non-existent support
for QuickTime.
You can insert old
QuickTime files (versions 1,
2 and 2.5) into PowerPoint
and have some cross-platform
success, but rarely
does this include content
created in the last five years.
For more details regarding
PowerPoint and QuickTime, visit this link..
Just as you would avoid
using a QuickTime file
when moving a presentation
from a Mac to a Windows
machine, avoid using the
Windows Media Video
(WMV) and Windows Media
Audio (WMA) formats if you are moving a presentation
from a Windows to a Mac
platform.
If you want movies to
play in both the Windows
and Mac versions of
PowerPoint, use AVI or
MPEG, rather the MPEG-1
file format.
8. Movie Export
PowerPoint on the Mac
can export an entire presentation
as a QuickTime
movie. If you have visited
the PowerPoint for
Windows newsgroups anytime
in the last few years,
you’ll know that this single
feature makes them more
jealous of the Mac users of
PowerPoint than anything
else. The reasons are not
difficult to ascertain. Once
you create a movie from a
presentation, you can do
anything with it — stream it
on the Web or create a DVD
that can be viewed on a television screen. These
movies can be seen by
Windows users if they have
a QuickTime plug-in and
player installed on their
computer. More information
can be found at www.apple.com/quicktime.
While there is no similar
export-as-movie feature
within Windows
PowerPoint, it is rumored
this may change with the
introduction of Longhorn,
Microsoft’s next version of
the Windows OS, due out in
2006. In the meantime,
Windows users have two
options. The first is to open
the presentation in
PowerPoint for Mac and
export it as a QuickTime movie and then transfer the
file back to the Windows
machine. The second option
is to use a screen video-capture
application, such as
TechSmith’s Camtasia, to
record the entire presentation in a multitude of video
formats. Camtasia even has
a PowerPoint plug-in that
places the recording toolbar
inside PowerPoint.
9. ActiveX and
Flash Export
ActiveX was a Microsoft technology that was given
to the open source
movement back in 1996, many years before it became fashionable
to
espouse the virtues of open source. ActiveX is the same
technology
that allows you to play
Macromedia Flash and
Director movies inside Internet Explorer and other
applications, including
PowerPoint. ActiveX is a
Microsoft technology and is
not available on the Mac
platform. What this means is
if you insert Flash movies
into a presentation using
PowerPoint for Windows,
the Flash files will not play
on the Mac.
Active X is also the technology
PowerPoint for
Windows uses for Control
toolbox items such as
Action and Radio buttons.
These items will not work
within PowerPoint for Mac,
and if used, will cause a
warning or error message.
You can insert Flash
movies inside PowerPoint
for Mac presentations using the Insert | Movie option.
But again, these files will not play when using
PowerPoint for Windows.
The only way to rectify
the Flash file issue is to
manually reinsert the file
once a presentation has
been transferred to a crossplatform machine.
You can learn more
about inserting Flash
movies in a Windows
version of PowerPoint here...
10. Other
Issues
The Send to Word feature
found in PowerPoint for
Mac (all versions) copies
and extracts all text found in
a presentation and places
the text into a Microsoft
Word document. This differs
from the “Send to Word” function in Windows PowerPoint
versions, which
allows additional formatting
choices such as transferring
pictures on the slides into Word along with the text.
Visual Basic (VBA)
remains the best programming
solution for cross-platform
PowerPoint developers.
But for those who like
to play with PowerPoint’s
programming options using
Visual Basic, the Mac versions
are a big disappointment.
PowerPoint 2004 for
Mac has VBA 5, and some
programming features that
exist in the newest versions
for Windows are missing
from the Mac version.
PowerPoint 2004 for Mac
users can take advantage of the new AppleScript implementation,
which provides a new method of automating
PowerPoint for Mac. However, AppleScripts do
not work within PowerPoint for Windows.
Be aware that color
gamma differences
between both platforms
mean presentation
colors created on
a Windows machine
appear lighter on a
Mac. This is not an
issue that can be
solved within PowerPoint; it is a platform issue.
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