What is a Slide Style

[Barry Beckham]

Imagine your talking to a newer user of PTE or even a potential customer. If you had to sum up in a sentence (or two) what slide styles are. How would you describe them so the they could easily be understood?

Anyone fancy giving it a go

[Jean-Cyprien]

a first draft

A slide style is the ability for everyone (including beginners) to use their own images to achieve instantly (or almost instantly) an effect (transition...) that would normally require time, and a little (or a lot !) of experience. It saves generally a lot of time if you have to reuse this effect very often.

(Now, what is an effect...? ! )

[davegee]

J-C,

I think that you should substitute "ANIMATION" for Transition (perhaps)?

DG

[Tonton Bruno]

A style is a comprehensive set of the parameters for all objects incuded in a view or a set of views, such as size, color or 3D animation.

You can create your own style from a view and appliy it to others views.

You can also use current styles included in PTE library or created by other users and loaded in your PTE library.

 

 

[goddi]

Greetings,

For those who use spreadsheets, a Style is like a 'macro':

"An automated input sequence that imitates keystrokes or mouse actions. Used to replace a repetitive series of keyboard and mouse actions."

Or

"A single instruction that expands automatically into a set of instructions to perform a particular task."

Gary

 

[Lin Evans]

Slide Style Definition:  Accomplish yourself what an experienced, talented user of this slideshow and animation software can do in one hour by four mouse clicks in 15 seconds. 

Lin

[tom95521]

Slide Styles can save time by applying complex animations to single or multiple images.

Tom

[Jean-Cyprien]

I agree with you, davegee, transistion is not the first aim of a style. Animation ? Why not. Simple and complex animation.

[jt49]

A Slide Style is a pre-constructed, re-usable template for a slide, or a sequence of slides.

[wideangle]

In PTE you can add objects and animations to one or more slides, and vary their properties. 

If you wish, you can save the whole effect in the form of a slide style, which you can then use to apply to other slides.

 

Regards

wideangle

[Jean-Cyprien]

Very good and simple summary, wideangle, but you should insist on the benefits of a style (easy for a begginers, save a lot of time) 

[davegee]

The repetitive tasks aspect should also be emphasised. If you split a 1920x1080 image into 216 or 432 vertical strips you only want to do it once and then save it as a Style so that you never need to do it again. Styles can provide you with the "building blocks" for other similar, more complicated animations.

Someone mentioned the similarity to "Actions" in Photoshop and I would agree with this. 

[Lin Evans]

As Barry said: Imagine your talking to a newer user of PTE or even a potential customer.

There are myriad things which a slide style "can" be used for. But an explanation to a new or potential user need not, and I believe should not get into details or even use the word "animation" or "transition" or anything similar. They only need to really know that a slide style is something with which they, the new user,  can replace the learned efforts of an expert with the software with a few mouse clicks. Questions will eventually occur and then specifics can be revealed as the user is more amenable to deeper understanding. If they are already PhotoShop users, then the word "action" may be useful. The issue is not to throw too much at them at once but rather allow them to see what a style can do and let them know that they can also do what they see with a few mouse clicks. This my opinion based on years of developing software and teaching people to use it. 

Best regards,

Lin

[wideangle]

I think there are two separate stages relating to Barry’s original question.

1. Give a clear and simple description of what a slide style is. (See my attempt above!). 

2. It can then be followed up with its merits and advantages as the second stage. (Saves time, achieve results in a few clicks, etc)

I also think that actions speak louder than words, so a range of differing examples would help with stage 2.

Regards

wideangle 

[Barry Beckham]

I am glad this has started some debate, because when I sat at my keyboard to make some notes for a future video, I came to an abrupt stop. It’s not easy to define what slide styles are in a way that encourages, and doesn’t sound so complex it turns people off.

It reminded me of the old format or aspect ratio issue, where to try and educate anyone on the pros and cons. It soon became so tied up in so many different issues. You could have some sympathy with the person who first asked the question who was quickly losing the will to live.

Personally I like Lin’s definition, which sums up slide styles pretty well, but then wide angle’s view about adding merits and advantages later.

In an odd sort of way, it says a lot about slide styles that there is so much to them. Hard to explain, but the reasons are positive

[Ronniebootwest]

I have not really tried to use Slide Styles yet so cannot comment.

Are there any tutorials available on how to use them?