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PPT2HTML for Educators
More and more teachers use PowerPoint to create class content. More and more schools are putting class content on line. That's great for the teachers and students, but it can be a real nightmare for the webmaster or instructional technology specialist charged with making it all happen.
PowerPoint's a great authoring tool but ...
PowerPoint's a good tool for creating and organizing content, but it's not so good at putting the content on the web. If you've converted more than a few presentations to web pages, you know the problems with PowerPoint's HTML output:
- The options, interface and HTML output change with every new version of PowerPoint; they're poorly documented and difficult to control.
- It creates framed pages which don't work well within framed pages like those used by many popular content management systems
- Cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility? Minimal.
- ADA/580 compliance? Accessible HTML? Not a pretty picture.
- Control over what the resulting HTML looks and acts like? Sorry, no.
Unless you have PPT2HML, that is
PPT2HTML lets you put your PowerPoint presentations on the web quickly and efficiently. It gives you near-total control over the appearance of the converted web pages.
The PPT2HTMLBatch takes it a step further and automates the whole conversion process. You, your users or a server script drop PowerPoint files into a "watched" folder and PPT2HTMLBatch converts them per your specs.
| Feature | PowerPoint | PPT2HTML | PPT2HTMLBatch |
| Ease of use | PowerPoint's HTML: a confusing hodgepodge of options. Each version has different options, produces very different HTML. |
All options in one dialog or supplied in templates. Users choose a template, visit a single preferences dialog, then convert their files. Works identically in PowerPoint 97, 2000, 2002/XP and 2003 |
Administrator sets up all options and templates on a single computer. PPT2HTML Batch converts any PPT files that appear in a watched folder. |
| User training | Necessary, time-consuming and expensive. Users must be re-trained with each new version of PowerPoint. |
Minimal training needed. Users choose a template, pick options and PPT2HTML does the rest. Works identically in all supported versions of PowerPoint. No retraining needed when you upgrade Office. |
None required Users never see PPT2HTML. It's not even installed on their computers. They simply drop their PPT files into a watched folder. |
| ADA compliance e.g. accessibility to users with vision disabilities who must use assistive devices like screen readers |
PowerPoint 2000 and on: reliance on frames and graphical rather than text content makes HTML inaccessible. Many navigation features rely on JavaScript and break if the browser doesn't support it (or it's turned off in the browser). PowerPoint 97 saves a set of text-only web pages but user must know how to navigate to them from default graphical web page. You have no control over layout of these pages. |
Includes a text-only template that's been tested by a screen-reader user who found it perfectly usable/navigable. You'll find links to this and other example conversions on the Sample Conversions page. You can edit this template to customize it to your own needs, a large-text version, for example. |
Same as PPT2HTML, but automatic. And you could automatically convert each presentation to both an accessible text-only and a visually oriented graphical version. |
| Cross-browser compatibility | Depends on PowerPoint version. Limited in later versions The more features you choose, the more MSIE-specific the resulting HTML becomes. |
Supplied templates are totally cross-browser compatible. If you and your HTML editor can make compatible HTML, PPT2HTML can use it as a template file and do the same. |
Same as regular PPT2HTML. |