PowerPoint controls and standalone

[guenther-dan]

Hi there,

This request has to do with a current feature in ZionWorks that (in our opinion) beats hands-down any other software we've found. And that is the control window for PowerPoint presentations. Microsoft, in its most recent version, included a "Presenter's View" which is a control window useful in multiple monitor situations--double clicking on slides enables the presenter to control the presentation graphically. It is modestly useful, but has minimal keyboard control and the slide previews are generally impossible to read (such as the text on worship slides)

ZionWorks, however, does this several times better because 1) your slide previews can be resized by widening the preview pane. And 2) ZionWorks allows you to control multiple presentations, start and stop each one, turn looping on and off, etc. (And I notice that, although this feature is not present yet, there are other posters requesting keyboard control).

You guys have done an amazing job just seamlessly integrating with Powerpoint! We started using ZionWorks for this same reason; not for the use of the database but for controlling PowerPoint shows, which is where we have developed a large song database, specialized backgrounds for songs, etc.

Leading to two requests...
1) the main disadvantage of the preview pane is that it only shows one column of slide previews. Hence, when a person widens the preview pane, the previews get larger and eventually take up the whole width of the column such that you can only view one slide at a time. Our request is whether you might be able to allow the PowerPoint feature in ZionWorks to take up the remainder of the screen real estate, allowing for more slide previews (such as in multiple rows, or columns). This is an advantage for the presenter, who is needing to jump to non-sequential slides.

2) Even more interestingly, I might be bold in saying that there is a wider audience for this PowerPoint control window. Surprisingly, even though you are simply integrating with existing Microsoft API's to control their software, nobody that I can tell has done it yet in a standalone program. At least, as non-commercial software. Might you be willing to encapsulate your code for this PowerPoint control window in a standalone executable? Our church would be interested; particularly if this represents only a couple hours of reformatting and compiling the relevant code. Or even simply removing the GUI access to the other parts of ZionWorks, such that it *looks* like a standalone PowerPoint controller even though it remains the same download size. And let us know if this is something for which we could contribute, if say it involved more like an entire day or week's worth of work.

Dan Guenther

[Mealz]

YES~!

This would be great. Currently we are only using zionworx to control powerpoint. It would be great if we could use a fullscreen powerpoint control window.

[Paul_rachel_ryan]

Something I found using ZionWorx to control Powerpoint was that if the rector wanted to use the USB remote to control the slideshow (ie the operator would simply start the presentation and hand over control rather than have to follow along and wait for the nod!) it didn't work. However, if after clicking the green button, the slideshow program icon in the bottom taskbar was just highlighted, the remote then functioned perfectly. Once he has finished, the operator clicks the stop button in Zionworx and is back in control.

This was in Win98SE so imagine it would work in later Windows.

[chris_h62]

Yeah, I have found this works perfectly well in WinXP as well!