Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P36: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 324 Designing and Refining a PowerPoint Presentation Figure 3-6 I created this SmartArt graphic by entering text into a dialog box associated with the graphic. Setting smooth or flashy transitions One of the arts that make watching a movie enjoyable comes in the form of editing between scenes. Very rarely do you see a jump cut that switches from one location to another one actor to another or one annoying product placement to the next. Instead editors employ devices including fades wipes and dissolves these make one scene morph smoothly into the next. When done well viewers barely notice they re happening. You can apply the same sort of effects between slides in a PowerPoint presentation. One slide can fade out while a new one fades in. That often is the best way to move from slide to slide in a professional boardroom presentation. If you re making a sales presentation or entertaining an audience you can choose flashier transitions effects impossible to miss. These include starbursts animated wipes from corner to corner and other attentiondemanding devices. In addition to the transition type you can set the speed at which it unfolds as well as the trigger keyboard mouse click or a particular period of time that sets it in motion. You can apply a transition to a slide as you create it or you can go back and edit slides in a completed presentation. You can also apply the same transition to all the slides in a show. Designing and Refining a PowerPoint Presentation 325 1. Click the Animations tab and locate the Transitions to the Slide group. 2. Click the transition you want to use. An example appears in Figure 3-7. As with most other effects you can see a preview by hovering the pointer over the transition s icon. Figure 3-7 A sampling of available basic fades and dissolves as well as more complex wipes that you can apply to a PowerPoint slide. Going out on the Web from PowerPoint We live in a connected society and increasingly a wireless world. So why not reach out .
