While I'm thinking about Microsoft Office Live Meeting, here's a word of warning for speakers and content creators who plan to present using that technology. You'll probably be using the downloaded and installed Windows client as a presenter. If you upload PowerPoint slides that include builds or animations, they will look beautiful and work perfectly. But you might not be aware that attendees joining via the Live Meeting Web Access console don't see animations. They see a static view of each slide, with all the content overlaid at once.
The webinar I attended yesterday used some very pretty slides, professionally produced by a graphics company. Several slides relied on animations and builds to get the point across. The speaker was advancing the animations and obviously seeing each one occur. But as an audience member, I saw a confusing jumble, with text that overlapped other text, images that were partially hidden, and text/image conflicts.
I searched around the Microsoft site for a warning about the use of PowerPoint animations in Live Meeting 2007. I finally found it sandwiched into a simple little section titled "WEB CONSOLE":
When you are using the Web-based client in Microsoft Office Live Meeting Service, there are some limitations. The following features are available in the Windows-based client but not the Web-based client:
- Creating and sharing a screen snapshot
- High fidelity PowerPoint rendering and slide animation
- Viewing audio status for attendees
... (the list went on)
That's subtle. How do we interpret the phrase "High fidelity PowerPoint rendering and slide animation"? I don't know about the high fidelity part, but it means that your animations and builds aren't seen by parts of your audience, and you can't tell as a presenter. Not my favorite way to present.
