For about a week, I have been studying 4 different ways to create slideshows on the Web. In the past, I have created several slideshows with Google Slides. But I was looking for something more neutral and independent of Google. 

The roundup of software included 1) Flowtime.js, 2) Impress.js, 3) Reveal.js and 4) Marp

All of these are quite interesting and capable slideshow JavaScript libraries. Flowtime and Reveal allow for both horizontal and vertical placement of slides, which can be great for having general information that can become more detailed by diving downward in your slides. Impress uses an infinite size canvas onto which you place each slide. This takes more work as does the formatting of slides. The animations in Impress are quite impressive. The first three programs all work well on PCs; however, they are not very seamless on Mobile devices.

Coming to the last program, Marp, I found it to work very well on PCs and Mobile devices. The learning curve for Marp was around overriding the formatting for individual slides and slide elements. Once I figured out how to format lists, links, paragraphs and headers to my liking, the rest was easy. On Windows, there are two programs that have plugins for Marp, 1) Obsidian and 2) Visual Studio Code. Obsidian is a general purpose note taking program with a wide array of plugins. I keep daily notes and other information in my Obsidian vault. Since I dabble with programming, I also have VS Code installed. It is first and foremost a programmer’s editing environment.

Using the Marp plugin is almost identical in Obsidian and VS Code. One simply enters the appropriately formatted slide text then clicks on an icon to create a Marp HTML file which can then be uploaded to a web server. Since I already have a lot of text in Obsidian, I decided to use it along with the Marp Slides plugin. Here is a link to my first slideshow: What Time Is It?

On PCs, spacebar, right or down arrows move to the next slide. Shift spacebar, left or up arrows move to the previous slide. The Home and End keys move to the first and last slides.

On Mobile devices, users can swipe left / down to move forward or right / up to move backward.

I hope you benefit from one or more of these slideshow libraries.

By Michael Todd

An IT Professional with over 30 years of experience with PC setup & troubleshooting, programming, consulting and the use of the most popular business applications. This is all about making the technology do the most for you, so you have more time to enjoy life.

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