The Biggest Buzz - Publish to PDF
The biggest buzz is all about the fact that you can publish to PDF format from Presentations X3. Here Corel has got a jump on its biggest competition, Microsoft. Although PDF files can't be opened in Presentations X3, they can be opened and edited in the main program, WordPerfect X3. (You will have this program too, since you cannot purchase Presentations X3 separately). Use WordPerfect X3 to easily extract the text of a PDF document and then paste it into the Slide Outliner view in Presentations X3. A presentation can be created in a hurry using this text without having to recreate it from scratch.As well as being able to publish to PDF, Presentations X3 offers the ability to publish to XML or HTML. Publishing to HTML offers many different options, one of which I was pleased to note, was as a Flash movie. All animations are retained in the Flash movie clip, so this is a great feature for adding your presentation to webpages because it reduces the file size at the same time.
More Features in Presentations X3
The Show on the Go feature makes your presentation ready to show on another computer, just like PowerPoint's Pack and Go or Package for CD features. It includes a viewer as well, similar to the PowerPoint viewer.
If you are a CorelDRAW! user, you will be comfortable with the graphic and text elements in Presentations X3. I especially liked the fact that you could create Text Line text, which looks to be the same as "artistic text" in CorelDRAW!. This Text Line text becomes a graphic but can be handled differently than the TextArt feature (similar to Microsoft's WordArt). The usual text boxes for paragraphs are still a standard feature.
Presentations X3 and PowerPoint
You have the options to begin or save a new presentation in Presentations or PowerPoint mode. PowerPoint mode was a bit of a disappointment. Instead of the expected screen similar to PowerPoint, I saw a Presentations X3 interface with an extra task bar on the left side. However, even a die hard PowerPoint user, would be hard pressed not to be able to navigate this program easily.PowerPoint presentations can be opened in Presentations X3. The hype about this feature is very misleading. If you have jazzed up your PowerPoint presentation with lots of charts, animations and hyperlinks, you will be very disappointed as many of the features are not supported in Presentations X3, such as -
- no animation on objects
- no handout or note master
- slide transitions are all converted to a single transition
- many sound features are not supported
- movie files become bitmaps
- many text effects not supported
- no custom charts will convert
- organization charts are converted to graphic objects
- hyperlinks not supported
- action settings won't happen
- PowerPoint template files (*.pot) can't be opened
- macros you created in PowerPoint are ignored
- footers display as regular text boxees
The Bottom Line - My Take on Presentations X3
Let's face it. PowerPoint is still the leader in presentation software. Presentations is left back in the race, but Corel does produce an excellent product in Presentations X3.Corel has strived hard to please everyone by adding conversion to PowerPoint features and, Presentations X3 has some features that PowerPoint hasn't introduced yet, such as the publish to PDF feature. (That may change though, when PowerPoint 2007 finally does get released early in 2007). All in all, I think Presentations X3 is an excellent program and given the right circumstances, could easily give PowerPoint a run for its money.
Let's look at the competition -
First Look at PowerPoint 2007
Shop for Corel WordPerfect Office X3 Suite
