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Changing the look of 3D lists
By Tim Hards | November 28, 2007
In the last post, I discussed Perspector 4’s new lists. I mentioned that you could change the properties of lists using the Format List dialog box.
If you select a list in Perspector, and click Format, Format List…, you will see a dialog box like this:
I will discuss each of these properties in turn over the next few days, starting with…
List Direction
Direction describes the orientation of the list, and determines in which direction new list items are added.
The Basic List in the Perspector library is an example of a vertical list:
Whereas the Simple Flow Across list is an example of a horizontal list:
If a custom direction is used, there is no preferred orientation. The distance between list items is wholly determined by the offset values, which will be described in a later post.
Although the direction property is useful when creating new lists (more on this later), it isn’t so useful when changing the appearance of existing lists. The other properties are more useful, and I will describe these next.
Topics: 3D lists, Perspector | No Comments »
Perspector 4.0
By Tim Hards | November 8, 2007
Perspector 4.0 has been released. There are various improvements throughout the tool. I will discuss these changes in more detail over the next few weeks.
The big change for me has been the ability to edit lists much more easily.
Older versions of Perspector came with some list images in the library. But if you wanted to add new list items, you had to manually copy and reposition the item shapes. And editing the text in the list required editing each of the list items separately.
That’s all changed. Now you can move up and down through the list items when you are editing the text. If you want to add a new item, you now simply press Return. Delete and backspace join items together. This is how lists are edited in PowerPoint, so is extremely easy to pick up.
There’s also another neat feature of the lists if you’re interested in digging into the lists more. The Format List dialog box gives you access to the list properties. These properties control how the list items are positioned relative to each other. Because you can edit these, list appearance is very flexible. I will cover these properties in a future post.
With Perspector 4.0, the Perspector Library has been expanded with a bunch of new lists. Note that these images are not available in the Perspector 3 library because Perspector 3 doesn’t know how to handle the new list object.
The website gallery page hasn’t been updated yet, so I thought I’d post the new library images here so you can see the range of lists available:
Topics: Perspector | No Comments »
Interview with Ellen Finkelstein
By Tim Hards | August 30, 2007
I was recently interviewed by Ellen Finkelstein. She has written a number of books, including one about PowerPoint 2007, and runs a helpful PowerPoint tips website.
You can read the interview here.
Topics: Perspector | No Comments »
New version: Perspector 3.2.1
By Tim Hards | August 29, 2007
Released earlier today, Perspector 3.2.1 has a couple of changes.
Topics: Perspector | No Comments »
Easier 3D charts with new version: Perspector 3.2
By Tim Hards | July 25, 2007
We released Perspector 3.2 earlier today. It’s all about charts…
You might have loved the charts that you created with Perspector before, but you probably didn’t like it when you wanted to update your chart with new values. You would have found that you had to recreate your chart whenever you wanted to change a value! But no more!
Perspector 3.2 has a button which brings up a table of the values used in the chart. When you OK your changes, the chart is updated.
This change isn’t limited to modifying individual values, or renaming series and categories. You can delete whole rows and columns in the grid, or enter new ones, and the number of series or categories in the chart will be modified accordingly.
You will also be interested to hear that you can now create charts using data entered into this grid. You aren’t limited anymore to having to use data from Excel or a PowerPoint table.
This flexibility is pretty useful – you can now generate charts from the data in any program that copies data to the clipboard as tab-delimited values. Simply copy your values, and then paste them into the grid.
Perspector 3.2 also has better handling of data values. You now have control over how the data is organized: whether the chart series is stored in the rows or in the columns of the data. This setting is identified automatically, but you can toggle the setting in the Chart Properties box.
See more details and screenshots. Don’t forget that if you already own a version of Perspector 3, you are entitled to a free upgrade – follow the link for details.
Topics: 3D charts, Perspector, Professional Edition | No Comments »
Use XML to create 3D images
By Tim Hards | July 7, 2007
If you would like to write a program or VBA macro to create 3D Perspector images, you will be very interested in the new XML resources available on the Perspector website. A new article describes how Perspector image data is stored and how XML can be used to generate Perspector images.
The XML data model that Perspector uses has also been published.
More information on this subject will come in the future, but please ask me if you have any questions.
Topics: Perspector, XML | No Comments »
Review in Presentation Helper
By Tim Hards | July 5, 2007
UK-based Presentation Helper has recently added a review of Perspector.
PowerPoint MVP Geetesh Bajaj has previously reviewed Perspector on his comprehensive Indezine website. If you spot any other reviews of Perspector, please let me know so that I can share them here.
Topics: Perspector, Reviews | No Comments »
New version: Perspector 3.1.4
By Tim Hards | June 25, 2007
Version: Perspector 3.1.4
Release date: 23 June 2007
This release has 1 change.
Fixed: When the ’3 Section Cycle’ diagram is inserted from the Perspector Panel, the panel and PowerPoint froze. This problem would have occurred with any diagram whose name started with a digit, but ’3 Section Cycle’ was the only one that exists in the library.
Topics: Perspector | No Comments »
The full range of Perspector’s 3D images
By Tim Hards | June 17, 2007
The Perspector website has been updated. The gallery pages have been re-organised and improved so that it is clearer to see the images that can be produced with Perspector.
There are now 4 clearly defined gallery pages:
Library Images – the images available in the Perspector Library.
3D Charts – the different chart types and styles available in Perspector Professional Edition.
Slide and Image Layouts – the slide layouts that can be used to display images and slides.
Example Slides – slides, presentations and images created with Perspector.
All of the pages also include examples of slides that were built using these.
We made these changes because images are the best way to show what Perspector is capable of. These pages now show the full range and variety of the images accessible with Perspector.
When using Perspector these pages are excellent if you would like a quick overview of the images and styles available to you.
Topics: Perspector, Perspector website and info | No Comments »
Perspector 3.1.1: PNG pictures in 3D
By Tim Hards | May 18, 2007
We have just released Perspector 3.1.1. This minor update now allows PNG pictures to be inserted!
Also if any inserted picture has transparent areas, these are kept (unfortunately this doesn’t work with PowerPoint 2000 – those areas still go black).
Here you can see a clip art PNG picture used with the Free-Floating layout that is available with Professional Edition. Because the placeholders for the picture are already positioned, this image took 1 minute to create. Without layouts it is still possible to create the image, but it will take a little longer because the pictures have to be manually placed.
Time to create: 1 minute.
Tags: 3D, PowerPoint, PNG, clipart, clip art
Topics: Perspector, Slide placeholders | No Comments »