EXCLUSIVES

By MacDirectory Staff

ConceptDraw Presenter is the newest addition to the ConceptDraw product line, produced by CS-Odessa (see previous issues for other CS-Odessa product reviews).

ConceptDraw Presenter is intended for the creation of dynamic presentations and slide shows. It's based on ConceptDraw, the vector-based drawing software for the creation of diagrams and schemes. This makes it indispensable to those who need to include a lot of vector illustrations like charts, diagrams, layouts and schemes. Additionally, the program is easy enough to learn and use that it can be used as an alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint.

You begin using the software by creating a totally blank presentation and working from scratch or by using the wizard, which allows you to build an outline of your presentation, to be later filled with your original content.

The interface of ConceptDraw Presenter is quite distinctive and shows the graphic design roots of the developers. It contains a full set of drawing tools - graphic primitives, such as line, rectangle, ellipse and others, a variety of fill and shadow patterns, arrowheads, and more. Connectors allow the user to link objects to each other, thus demonstrating relationship between objects. The connection is maintained when you move a connected object. There's a lot of other little niceties that make working more convenient, like an adjustable grid for precise positioning of objects, guide lines to align objects and move them all together, and so on. A set of tools helps you work with multiple objects and control their alignment, create equal spacing between objects, and make them same size. This makes ConceptDraw Presenter different from PowerPoint, which is mainly oriented to textual presentations.

You can create objects manually, but there's also a large selection of pre-drawn objects contained in the libraries that come with ConceptDraw Presenter. You can drag and drop them into your presentation to create illustrations, or assign any object a hyperlink to a web page, file or another ConceptDraw document. In the latter case, you can even specify a page inside such documents. This allows the user to create presentations consisting of several documents connected with hyperlinks.

As soon as you've prepared the contents, you can decorate it with various effects. ConceptDraw Presenter offers animation effects typical for most presentation programs. All animation effects are positioned on a single floating panel and are easy to control. You can assign animation to individual objects or an entire slide. The Preview function allows you to immediately see how an effect will look on the slide.

Visual effects can be accompanied with sound as well, with each object or slide assigned its own sound. Unlike PowerPoint, where an animation can't start before the previous one ends, in ConceptDraw Presenter animation effects can be played simultaneously for several objects. The same applies to the sounds ­ that is, if you add a soundtrack to an entire slide, the sound effects of individual objects won't interrupt the soundtrack.

Also, you can add captions to a slide - text that will be scrolling through the slide during the slide show. The scrolling speed, frequency and some other parameters can be modified.

If there are elements, that should be present on every slide like a background pattern, a company logo, or a soundtrack, it's convenient to use the background slide. The background slide is something like Master Page in PowerPoint, in that any changes on the background slide will be displayed on all other slides.

Every slide may have text notes that contain comments for the slide. Notes can be accessed during slide show via the context menu or a keyboard shortcut.

Normally, a presentation is viewed in the full screen mode. The user has an option to choose desired screen resolution, which can differ from the one you currently use. During a slide show, you can use the pen to highlight something on the screen. If your presentation is going to be played elsewhere, you can use the Save to Distribute option. It allows you to save the presentation in a special format, ready for playing with information on the fonts, sounds, and so on. It's convenient when you want to send your presentation to someone or play it on a different computer. Such a file can be played with a small free player, which is supplied with the program.

What if you need to export a document to some other file format? ConceptDraw
Presenter supports exporting to most popular graphic formats like PDF, HTML or Flash. When exporting to HTML, you can choose to save graphics as Flash - then your presentation with all animation effects, sounds and assigned hyperlinks can be played in a regular web browser.

Another important feature is support for PowerPoint file format, so you can exchange your documents with PowerPoint users.

ConceptDraw Presenter exists in two versions - Macintosh and Windows. The Mac version works under OS X and Mac OS 9; however, it's recommended to run ConceptDraw Presenter under OS X to take advantage of its more advanced
memory management.

To sum it all up, ConceptDraw Presenter is a perfect choice for those whose presentations often include diagrams and schemes. It is worth trying if you're looking for an alternative to MS PowerPoint. ConceptDraw Presenter has everything you need in an all-purpose presentation program; its simple interface and ease of use balance out the lack of bells and whistles.

Mac OS 9.x, or Mac OS X (recommended) PowerPC G3 processor 128 MB RAM
Price: $199 > www.conceptdraw.com