There may come a time when you want to present a series of informational slides to folks who visit your Web site. This course, for example, could be presented in a classroom setting with a slide projector displaying information and illustrations. Most people have seen presentations built with Microsoft PowerPoint, and many have used it to build their own. Available for both Mac and PC, PowerPoint is the most widely used slide creation (presentation) software available, but it isn't alone in the market. AppleWorks is a popular Mac alternative to PowerPoint.

With PowerPoint, you can easily turn your presentations into HTML documents ready to publish to the Web. PowerPoint helps you customize your presentation. For example, you can include animations, use frames, choose the way you move to other slides or documents, and select different button styles. PowerPoint maintains the interactive settings that jump to other slides or documents.

To publish pages to the Web with PowerPoint:

1. Open the presentation you want to save in HTML format.
2. Select File > Save As, select Web Page and then follow the instructions.

Figure 5-2 shows a screenshot of a PowerPoint presentation that's been saved as a Web page.

Figure 5-2: A slide show generated from PowerPoint.

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You can find many examples of PowerPoint presentations by searching the Web for slideshow or PowerPoint slideshow .

Publish Printed Documents to the Web as PDFs

If you've browsed the Web for a while, you've probably come across PDF files. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are an invention and trademark of Adobe Systems . Essentially, PDF files are duplicates (in appearance and content) of documents created in a word processor, spreadsheet, or desktop publishing application, to name a few. The advantage of PDF is that anyone who has the free Acrobat® Reader program can read and print the files, regardless of which application was used to create them. PDFs weren't invented for the Web, but they can easily be added to a Web site, and are viewable and sometimes editable there. When you install the current version of Acrobat Reader, a Web plug-in is also installed in your browser's Plug-Ins folder.

The IRS uses PDF files to enable folks to download tax forms right from the IRS Web site. When you find the form you're looking for (in this case a W-9 form), just click the link and you'll see something that looks like Figure 5-3.

Figure 5-3: Viewing an Adobe Acrobat PDF file on the IRS site.

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Figure 5-3 illustrates just how valuable a utility Adobe PDF is. You can create forms and display complete brochures. You can link to PDF files in the same way you link to other Web pages.

Wrap Up

The best way to learn the proper way to create and use multimedia is to experiment with it. Find out if your Web site building software of choice provides any assistance with inserting multimedia, try creating different kinds of multimedia, and record and edit your own sound files and video. Live it up. In Lesson 6, you'll find out how to make your site more visible and draw in the visitors.

To review the material in this lesson and to get started with your multimedia adventure, take a stab at the quiz questions and the assignment. As always, we encourage you to share your experiences and ask questions on the Message Board.