Zengobi Forums

[jjweimer]

Well, I just spent a short time looking at videos for Prezi. I think this application might be a clear sign of the next revolution in presentation tools. Two things struck me in particular. First, the "Zebra" input mode to move, resize, and rotate objects initially looks a bit out of place stuck over an object until you think "made for a touch-pad input screen instead of mouse". Secondly, the ability to set sequential steps on and zoom in/out of various sections of an entire "idea space" is very cool.

I'll not be trading in Curio for Prezi to do my presentation development. Curio has a far stronger feature set. Still, spiffing up the presentation mode in Curio toward a Prezi paradigm would only be a really good thing IMO.

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JJW

[jshadow007]

The beauty of Curio, IMO, is how well it integrates with other software tools in your workflow. Curio can be the place where you keep everything, even Prezi files (should you pony up for a subscription that lets you download the files). I think you could even launch a presentation file in presentation mode if you configured a jump action properly, but I never really play around with presentation mode myself.

[jjweimer]

[jfeust]

I think George needs to be cautious of what's call "feature creep" as well. It's great to add new features, but none of us want curio to be overweight and hard to use because it's trying to do too much. Prezi's zoomable presentations are amazing, but might be very hard to pull off in the Curio paradigm.

I don't view Curio as primarily a presentation application however, so my use cases are a bit different (for now).

[jjweimer]

[jfeust]

I see what you're getting at jj. Even at a minimum the presentation mode should be zoomable up to the documents original size.

Then the ability to move around the image at that zoom level (perhaps like the mac desktop zoom effect where focus follows your mouse pointer.

All of that would rule.

[dzec]

A Curio ideaspace looks pretty much like a Prezi workspace. It can contain at least all the kinds of files that Prezi allows to be inserted in a presentation. All that's lacking, from my point of view, is the ability to control the playback sequence in each ideaspace in presentation mode. Since Curio allows multiple ideaspaces, this makes it potentially much more powerful than the single presentation limit in Prezi. It would allow a collection of multiple Prezi presentations.

The specific Prezi-like presentation features I'd love available in Curio's presentation mode are:
• smart zooming - automatically magnify, rotate and centre the selected object from the ideaspace when I double click it
• pre-defining the sequence in which objects in the idea space will be highlighted during a presentation -- Prezi calls this the storyline and uses a "path" tool to sequence objects for display during a presentation. We'd have to differentiate the "next" button that takes us to the next object to be shown in the ideaspace from the button that takes us to the next idea space.

One last observation:
• Prezi's "zebra" tool is impressive. It's much more intuitive than using an inspector and drop-down menus. While not necessary, something like it could greatly simplify placing and formatting objects in an idea space -- and of course, sequencing them if George implements a more robust presentation mode.

In the meantime, I LOVE Curio and use it everyday.

Thanks George, for creating such an amazing piece of software and for listening to your users. There aren't many developers who respect their user base the way you do.

[jjweimer]

[jjweimer]

After thinking a bit more on this, the two features that summarize what I would want from an improved presentation mode in Curio are ...

* A user should be able to zoom, pan, and rotate the viewing region in presentation mode.
* A user should be able to define a sequence for showing specific things on a given Idea Space.

The way that Prezi does its zoom, pan, and rotate of a viewing window could be a useful model.

I can see two approaches for setting sequences of things for viewing in presentation mode. The first allows the user to set specific presentation sequence numbers to objects on the Idea Space. That begs the question -- what objects? Only "high level" objects (mind maps, tables, lists, cards) or also the inherent "figures" inside the objects? What about drawing objects -- should every line, arrow, circle, square .... have a possible sequence number?

The second approach is to allow the user to draw what I would call "presentation frames" on an Idea Space. This is a rectangle that defines a specific view of the Idea Space. Each frame could then have a (set of) sequence number(s) to define its order in the presentation.

I tend to favor more the second approach. Some advantages I see are ...

* Possibly more intuitive for the user when considering such things as ...
--- No confusion about which objects in the plethora of objects within Curio can and cannot have presentation sequence numbers (presentation frames have sequence numbers, not objects)
--- the ZERO FRAME is always set as the entire Idea Space (not some random object in the Idea Space)
--- the aspect ratio of any given presentation is always going to be either 16:9 (HD) or 4:3 (TV), and this is already a rectangular frame
--- drawing boxes allows the user to "preset" and predefine far more precisely what will and will not show vs selecting objects (ie, frame 3 will show only this corner of the table rather than the entire table)
--- users coming from PowerPoint type packages are already trying to fit what they want to show into boxes (so they should understand the concept of just putting boxes around regions in the Idea Space to mark what they want to show on the "next slide")
* Likely less overhead in coding to implement and manage (my guess here)

I also like the frame idea because it carries over from a beamer/LaTeX world. The markup coding in beamer to set frames and their sequence numbers on a given slide is rich, flexible, and very powerful.

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JJW

[jjweimer]

I have been thinking a bit more about this.

What might be useful is for each object on an Idea Space to have additional meta numbers for "frame" and "slide". The former (frame number) would define the sequence to show an object from the Idea Space. The latter (slide number) would define the sequence to show an object in a given frame. This paradigm is what beamer uses.

To step through various objects on an Idea Space in Presentation mode, you would set the sequence of frame numbers for each object. The create transition effects, you would set slide numbers within that frame.

So a list object might look like this (with the frame.slide numbers in []) ...

Frame: 1
List Title: My First Frame [1 - title shows on all slides]
1) This idea shows only on the first and last slides [1.1, 1.4]
2) This idea shows starting on the second and then on all others [1.2-]
3) This idea shows only on the second and third slides [1.2-1.3]
4) This idea shows only on the last slide [1.4]

Beamer also has meta-language rules that allow far finer grained control over frame + slide sequencing. The above type of meta numbering would however give a very good start.

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JJW

[george]

Pretty neat although a bit "programmery".

Hey, did you see this nifty PDF->Keynote app (via TUAW):
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/freesoftware/pdftokeynote.html

Output Curio to PDF then use that free app to convert to Keynote. Everything's an image so you can't edit it but it will let you do fancy Keynote builds/transitions and insert regular Keynote slides.

[jjweimer]

[Skids]

I wish to add my vote to a more advanced presentation tool set and think that Curio could be the basis for a great non-linear presentation application.

I think that the features that are in VUE would be an excellent place to start from. (See http://vue.tufts.edu/).

best wishes

Simon

[jjweimer]

Thanks for the interesting link to VUE. I tried it and immediately dropped it after only a short test. The UI for developing "context maps" just leaves way too much to be desired compared with Curio.

Having said that, I would however like Curio to support something akin to Prezi and/or VUE in how mind-map content can be "strung together" for presentation. Now that I have used Curio for a longer time, I think a cool way would be to allow a user to define (ie, draw a shape for or select figures to be contained within) presentation "frames" that overlay on an idea space and then link these frames together in whatever desired sequence. That seems to parallel what VUE shows in its tutorial videos.

Unfortunately, I do not see a way to import an externally developed mind map format in to VUE. Otherwise, I would have played around to export a Curio mind map out and import it in to VUE to make the presentation. This export/import ability might also be a nice feature to have if/when possible.

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JJW

[Skids]

I agree that the Java based Ui is no where near as nice as Curio's but I felt the way it allows the user to programme a path around a map setting zoom levels is very useful.

However I have just started experimenting with Curio (I'm a new user) defining a number of workspaces to 800 by 640, i.e. typical slide size, then copying graphics created in Omni-Graffle into each space. Next I add a large workspace named "Overview" and add a link to each of my slide workspaces which are arranged in a logical order. Finally I place a link to the overview slide on each slide workspace and can then move through the slides with the option of jumping out to the overview space at anytime. At present I only have Curio Core but I plan to trial the version with presentation mode to see how well this method works. One strength that Curio has is LinkBack: if I need to edit a graphic a double click opens it back in OmniGraffle something that Keynote does not do.

best wishes
Simon