Tips for Mathematica Slide Show Presenters

The "Creating Slide Shows" entry in the Help Browser details how to create slides in a notebook and how to begin presenting a slide show. This document picks up where that one leaves off, offering time-saving tips and presentation suggestions.

Contents

General Authoring Tips

Note: You can copy and paste navigation bars (those cells that contain the ({{\[FirstPage], ◂, ▸, \[LastPage]}}) buttons) just as you might any other cell.

You must place a navigation bar at the very top of your notebook. Otherwise you will not see the bar when you start your slide show (done by switching to the Slide Show environment). If you do find yourself on a page without navigation bars, you can either use the keyboard shortcuts for navigation, or switch to the Working environment and paste a navigation bar in the appropriate place.

Clicking on the following button inserts a navigation bar cell before each cell of style Title or Section in the InputNotebook[]. To make the button a palette that can be used with any notebook, simply select the button's cell bracket and choose File ⊳ Generate Palette from Selection. Alternatively you can simply copy the button into the notebook you wish to convert to a slide show and click on it there.

\(Insert\ \ Navigation\ \ \(\(Bars\ \ before\)\ 
\(all\ \ Title\ \ and\ \ Section\ \ Cells\)\)\)

In the Slide Show environment, the vertical scroll bar is shown only on slides long enough to need it. If you keep slides sufficiently short you will have no scrolling to do - one less thing to worry about during your presentation.

For two-column content, create "Bilateral Cells" using the AuthorTools palette, found in the File ⊳ Palettes menu.

Example use: For a step-by-step guide to creating a cell containing an image (e.g. a logo) with text alongside, click here.

If you are authoring mostly non-input cells, you may find it worthwhile to change the "default style for new cells". There are several ways to do this:

1. The menu item Format ⊳ Option Inspector... or

2. The keyboard shortcut ⇧|Ctrl[O] (⇧|⌘[O] on Mac) or

3. Right-clicking (Ctrl[click] on Mac) on the cell bracket and choosing Option Inspector from the pop-up menu.

To set  the default new cell style, choose Format ⊳ Option Inspector, then navigate to Cell Options ⊳ New Cell Defaults ⊳ DefaultNewCellStyle or simply search for DefaultNewCellStyle.

SetOptions[InputNotebook[],  
      DefaultNewCellStyle  ->  "Text"]

This approach and its consequences are explained in a related advanced tip.

Example use: When starting a talk from scratch, set the default new cell style to Section for ease in outlining your talk's headings.

To select all cells of a given style, hold down Alt and then select the cell bracket of any one cell of that style. Notice that all cells of that style are now highlighted.

Example uses:

Select all cells of the style you have chosen for your section headings. Copy and paste the resulting selection into a new slide. Convert the style of the pasted cells to Subsubsection, or a similar style, for emphasis.

See the tip for reducing file size.

Select all cells of the style Output, then simply hit ⌫.

To set up a hyperlink, just select the text or other object that you want to be a hyperlink. Then choose the menu item  Input ⊳ Create Hyperlink... and fill in the specification of where you want the destination of the hyperlink to be. You can link to an external notebook or url, or to a particular cell in a notebook, indicated by a cell tag.

Note that a graphic can be made into a hyperlink.

Reference "Setting Up Hyperlinks" in the Help Browser.

Example use: Add hyperlinks from each of an overview slide's headings to the corresponding sections.

Working with Style Sheets

In the standard style sheets, styles can look very different depending on the screen environment in which you view them. To be sure that your presentation will look as expected, edit it in the Slide Show screen environment.

Avoid using blank lines to space cells apart. Instead, for more fine-grained control, make use of the "CellMargins" option. This can be done using the "Option Inspector". It is advisable to change cell margins in the styles' definitions in the style sheet, rather than explicitly in individual cells. See advanced tip.

To change the style of the cell in which you are typing, you can use the "expand selection" shortcut (Ctrl[.]) repeatedly until the cell bracket is selected. Then use Alt[#], where # is the integer shortcut for the style you wish to use (Mac users should press ⌘ in place of Alt) . Alternatively, use Alt[0] or ⌘[0] to get a prompt into which you can enter the desired style's name. See screenshots below.

Windows and Mac OS X screenshots showing the shortcuts for styles in the Default style sheet in Mathematica 5.0.

The Slide Show screen environment does not typically show cell brackets for most styles. You should therefore have all cell groups open before entering this envirnoment. You may wish to make use of this advanced tip for progressively revealing content.

You can use Ctrl[A] or ⌘[A] to select all cells, then on Windows systems press Ctrl[}] or on Mac systems press ⇧|⌘[}] to open all cell groups.

To force cell brackets to always appear you can explicitly set the option ShowCellBracket -> True in individual cells or make changes to the style sheet (see advanced tip).

You can change the navigation bars' look and positions of its elements.

Examine the cell expression of an individual navigation bar and the style definitions in the style sheet (look for the style SlideShowNavigationBar, normally under the section heading, "Slide Show Styles", towards the end of the style sheet notebook).

For instance, it is a very easy matter to change the background color of the navigation bars. If you wish to specify the background color using the "Option Inspector", make sure to set Editable->True for the SlideShowNavigationBar style.

As an example, add the following definition to your style sheet to have the navigation bars appear as thin red lines when the notebook is in the Working screen environment:

Cell[StyleData["SlideShowNavigationBar", "Working"],
CellFrame -> {{0, 0}, {1, 1}},
ShowCellBracket -> False,
CellGroupingRules -> {"SectionGrouping", 30},
Background -> RGBColor[1, 0, 0],
CellMargins -> {{0, 0}, {1, 1}},
CellElementSpacings -> {"CellMinHeight" -> 0.1},
CellFrameColor -> RGBColor[1, 0, 0],
CellSize -> {Inherited, 1},
ButtonBoxOptions -> {ButtonFrame -> None},
ShowCellTags -> True]

If you are comfortable using the shortcuts Alt[PgDn] and Alt[PgUp] to move between slides during your presentation, then you can suppress the navigation bar by adding the option CellOpen->False to the definitions for style SlideShowNavigationBar in the SlideShow screen environment. The cell expression to be modified begins, Cell[StyleData["SlideShowNavigationBar", "SlideShow"].

To control the granularity at which content on individual slides can be revealed to your audience, you can use the ShowGroupOpenCloseIcon setting. When set as True, this displays a triangle symbol to the left of the leading cell in a cell group. Clicking the triangle opens or closes the cell group. Add the option ShowGroupOpenCloseIcon->True to any cell or to the definition of any style for which you want this feature.

Use the cell option CellOpen->False on any individual cell(s) that you would like to hide during the presentation.

1.  Use the Find ⊳ Add/Remove Cell Tags... dialog to add a cell tag such as "Notes" to all cells containing notes intended for the author only.
2.  Click on "Notes" in the Find ⊳ Cell Tags menu to select all cells containing the tag "Notes".
3.  Use the "Option Inspector" to set the option CellOpen->False for the selection.

Create a new cell style called "Notes", say, in the notebook style sheet and set the option CellOpen->False within the style's definitions for the Slide Show environment. See How to Create Your Own Style Sheet for more information.

Advanced: Editing Style Sheets

Important: If you make any changes to a notebook's style sheet, remember to embed that style sheet before sending the notebook to anyone else or opening the notebook on another machine. To do this, select "Import Private Copy" from the Format ⊳ Edit Stylesheet... menu. It's best to do this before making any style definition changes, to guarantee that you will see the results of your changes immediately.

Select Format ⊳ Edit Stylesheet... to begin editing.

You can select a cell in the style sheet notebook and edit the cell options through the "Option Inspector". Be sure that the pop-up menu labeled Show option values for is set to selection.

'Style definition cell' refers to any cell that begins with "Prototype for style" or "Modification for style"

Style sheet screenshot: Style definition cells for "Text" and "Small Text"

With the cell bracket of a style definition cell selected, you can edit it in any of the following ways:

In the image above, the cell which displays "Modification for style 'Text' in style environment 'SlideShow':" has the following cell expression:

Cell[StyleData["Text", "SlideShow"], FontSize->18]

This means that a text cell in the Slide Show environment inherits all the style definitions given in the cell displaying "Prototype for style 'Text':" but with the font size increased to 18pt.

The first nine style definitions in the style sheet are assigned shortcuts (see screenshot).  You can reorder the definitions in the style sheet to bring the styles you use most frequently to the top. Note, of course, that any such reordering will affect the shortcuts (if any) assigned to other styles (i.e., the standard Alt[9] or ⌘[9] may no longer refer to "Input").

The real test of a newly created or changed style is to input a new cell of that style and see if it looks as expected.

As you move options into the style sheet definition make a habit of removing those options from your individual cells.

To see the options given explicitly in a cell in your notebook, use Format ⊳ Show Expression

Use the Format menu item Remove Options... to clear all options given explicitly in a cell.

If you would like to be able to see cell brackets while in the Slide Show screen environment, do one of the following:

1. Under the section heading "Style Environment Names" select the cell displaying "Modification for all styles in style environment "SlideShow".

2. With the cell bracket selected, use the "Option Inspector" to set ShowCellBracket->True or modify the cell expression directly.

1. Under the section heading "Style Environment Names" copy the cell displaying "Modification for all styles in style environment "SlideShow".

2. Paste the cell under the same section heading and modify the cell expression directly.

3. Set ShowCellBracket->True and change "SlideShow" to "SlideShowBrackets" or whatever you wish to call it.

With a style definition cell selected, you can manipulate left and right CellMargins using the tabs shown in the Ruler.

It is possible to set the DefaultNewCellStyle in the style sheet. Add the option DefaultNewCellStyle->"Text", say, in the cell displaying "Prototype for style: "Notebook":", found under the section heading "Notebook Options" toward the top of any standard style sheet. With this option set, all notebooks that use this style sheet will have this setting for DefaultNewCellStyle. You can overwrite this option on a per-notebook basis by evaluating the following command within each desired notebook:

SetOptions[InputNotebook[],  
      DefaultNewCellStyle  ->  "Text"]

Find differences between two style sheets using StyleSheetDiff[nb1, nb2]. For details, look in in the help browser under "StyleSheetDiff".

Preparing Your Notebook for Presentation

Magnification can be set at selection, cell, notebook, or global level.

If required, increase magnification using any one of the following methods:

If your presentation contains graphics cells and you choose to alter the notebook's magnification, your graphics may look bad. To remedy this, select all graphics cells and use the menu item Cell ⊳ Rerender Graphics, which renders all selected cells that contain PostScript graphics.

Use the gamma correction/color correction setting in your system's Displays control panel to adjust colors to look better with LCD projectors.

To auto-hide the taskbar during your presentation:

Preparing Your Notebook for Distribution

Example use: To set the window size to 800x600, evaluate the following:

SetOptions[InputNotebook[],  WindowSize -> {800,  600}]

Troubleshooting

There may be a page break defined in one of the following places:

Remove or overwrite the page break(s) using PageBreakAbove->False or PageBreakBelow->False, as required.

It may help to use Format ⊳ Show Page Breaks to quickly identify the whereabouts of any explicit page breaks.

Check the notebook style sheet to see that there are style definitions for SlideShowNavigationBar, which normally appear under the section heading "Slide Show Styles". If the definitions are not present, copy and paste them from another style sheet.

A change in notebook magnification can cause this. See rerender graphics.

In-Presentation Tips

Use Alt[PgDn] to move through slides, especially those with complex graphics, to avoid scrolling past them and experiencing unnecessary delays while the Mathematica FrontEnd renders them.

To open/close the current cell group, you can use the keyboard shortcut Alt['] or  ⌘[`]

The shortcut ⇧|⌤ (note this is not the ↵ key) does one of two things: If an Input cell is selected, this shortcut evaluates that cell; otherwise, it selects the next Input cell.

Example use: You can use this shortcut during your presentation to avoid having to use your mouse to move to the next input cell.

Last input: Ctrl[L]  or ⌘[L]

Last output: ⇧|Ctrl[L] or ⇧|⌘[L]

Cycle through open Mathematica windows:  Ctrl[F6] or ⌘[`]

The Help Browser lists all available keyboard shortcuts for "Windows", "Macintosh", and "X".