austraLasia #1869
Ready for a little (very useful) learning? Try it with Strenna 2008
ROME: 8th June 2007 -- This week the Rector Major released the Strenna for 2008. 'Educating with the heart of Don Bosco....'. More to the point, there is now a Presentation (set of slides) available. You will find all of this in www.sdb.org.
And that's fine! But everyone knows that slide presentations are heavy - even in zipped form the Strenna 13 Mb. Too much. Can we reduce it? Yes, by taking out all the transitions and reducing the size of the images, but it is still 'hefty' as a normal presentation.
So here is an open source solution. Please let me know if it works for you. Everything is available on Bosconet in the 'What's new' section.
The solution lies in a folder of programs called KeyJnote. Download it from Bosconet and unzip it to your desktop. Zipped it is 4.6 Mb. I don't believe we can get KeyJnote any smaller than 4.6 Mb. You only need one other item - the 'presentation' which, oddly, is a pdf file. This is the secret. Strenna 2008 was 13 Mb as a presentation. As a pdf it is 2.7 Mb. Quite some reduction. Total download will have been 7.4 Mb over two downloads. Less than 5 minutes on a permanent connection but possibly up to 20 minutes otherwise. Anything less is a bonus. (But if you just cannot attempt 7.4, then see 'last resort' below).
Drag the Strenna 2008.pdf file into the KeyJnote folder. Inside that folder you will see two files called keyjnote. Ignore the html (web) file. Drag your Strenna 2008.pdf on top of keyjnote.exe instead and just wait. If you made a mistake with the file don't worry - nothing will happen! If you got it right your browser should open up - in my case it's Firefox. I haven't tried it with IE. Voilà - you have a presentation which will also give you some transitions and a bit more. The spacebar will move you on to another slide, or the 'down' key.
There are useful features: the Enter key will darken the screen except for a spotlight which will move with the mouse. + and - keys will adjust the size of the spotlight. Alternatively you can select an area and you will get a similar (square) effect. Enter toggles back to normal. Another useful feature is the tab key which drops you into a thumbnail overview of all slides. Your mouse will highlight the slide you want and a click will open it.
This solution will not reproduce all the bells and whistles of your original presentation, but it is still a good solution.
As a last resort you have two other options. Just download the pdf file, open it and go full screen - no fancy transitions but all the content and all the slide layout, and Foxit, a free pdf program is the best to view it in. Of course, if you have Acrobat 7.0 (but please don't waste money buying it!) already on your computer, then you can turn the pdf file back into a presentation by using the 'set transitions' feature!
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use BoscoWiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org. To contact austraLasia by voice on Skype, the Skype name is austraLasia
Ready for a little (very useful) learning? Try it with Strenna 2008
ROME: 8th June 2007 -- This week the Rector Major released the Strenna for 2008. 'Educating with the heart of Don Bosco....'. More to the point, there is now a Presentation (set of slides) available. You will find all of this in www.sdb.org.
And that's fine! But everyone knows that slide presentations are heavy - even in zipped form the Strenna 13 Mb. Too much. Can we reduce it? Yes, by taking out all the transitions and reducing the size of the images, but it is still 'hefty' as a normal presentation.
So here is an open source solution. Please let me know if it works for you. Everything is available on Bosconet in the 'What's new' section.
The solution lies in a folder of programs called KeyJnote. Download it from Bosconet and unzip it to your desktop. Zipped it is 4.6 Mb. I don't believe we can get KeyJnote any smaller than 4.6 Mb. You only need one other item - the 'presentation' which, oddly, is a pdf file. This is the secret. Strenna 2008 was 13 Mb as a presentation. As a pdf it is 2.7 Mb. Quite some reduction. Total download will have been 7.4 Mb over two downloads. Less than 5 minutes on a permanent connection but possibly up to 20 minutes otherwise. Anything less is a bonus. (But if you just cannot attempt 7.4, then see 'last resort' below).
Drag the Strenna 2008.pdf file into the KeyJnote folder. Inside that folder you will see two files called keyjnote. Ignore the html (web) file. Drag your Strenna 2008.pdf on top of keyjnote.exe instead and just wait. If you made a mistake with the file don't worry - nothing will happen! If you got it right your browser should open up - in my case it's Firefox. I haven't tried it with IE. Voilà - you have a presentation which will also give you some transitions and a bit more. The spacebar will move you on to another slide, or the 'down' key.
There are useful features: the Enter key will darken the screen except for a spotlight which will move with the mouse. + and - keys will adjust the size of the spotlight. Alternatively you can select an area and you will get a similar (square) effect. Enter toggles back to normal. Another useful feature is the tab key which drops you into a thumbnail overview of all slides. Your mouse will highlight the slide you want and a click will open it.
This solution will not reproduce all the bells and whistles of your original presentation, but it is still a good solution.
As a last resort you have two other options. Just download the pdf file, open it and go full screen - no fancy transitions but all the content and all the slide layout, and Foxit, a free pdf program is the best to view it in. Of course, if you have Acrobat 7.0 (but please don't waste money buying it!) already on your computer, then you can turn the pdf file back into a presentation by using the 'set transitions' feature!
_________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use BoscoWiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/RSS/rssala.xm Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org. To contact austraLasia by voice on Skype, the Skype name is austraLasia
