Powerpoint

by

The original version of this program was created by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin of Forethought, Inc. Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called “Presenter”. In 1987, it was renamed to “PowerPoint” due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins.

PowerPoint provides three types of movements:

  1. Entrance, emphasis, and exit of elements on a slide itself are controlled by what PowerPoint calls Custom Animations
  2. Transitions, on the other hand are movements between slides. These can be animated in a variety of ways
  3. Custom animation can be used to create small story boards by animating pictures to enter, exit or move

Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a closed source commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. The current versions are Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 for Windows and 2011 for Mac.

Versions for Microsoft Windows include:

  • 1990 PowerPoint 2.0 for Windows 3.0
  • 1992 PowerPoint 3.0 for Windows 3.1
  • 1993 PowerPoint 4.0 (Office 4.x)
  • 1995 PowerPoint for Windows 95 (version 7.0) — (Office 95)
  • 1997 PowerPoint 97 (version 8.0) — (Office 97)
  • 1999 PowerPoint 2000 (version 9.0) — (Office 2000)
  • 2001 PowerPoint 2002 (version 10) — (Office XP)
  • 2003 Office PowerPoint 2003 (version 11) — (Office 2003)
  • 2007 Office PowerPoint 2007 (version 12) — (Office 2007)
  • 2010 PowerPoint 2010 (version 14) — (Office 2010)

Versions for the Mac OS include:

  • 1987 PowerPoint 1.0 for Mac OS classic
  • 1988 PowerPoint 2.0 for Mac OS classic
  • 1992 PowerPoint 3.0 for Mac OS classic
  • 1994 PowerPoint 4.0 for Mac OS classic
  • 1998 PowerPoint 98 (8.0) for Mac OS classic (Office 1998 for Mac)
  • 2000 PowerPoint 2001 (9.0) for Mac OS classic (Office 2001 for Mac)
  • 2002 PowerPoint v. X (10.0) for Mac OS X (Office:Mac v. X)
  • 2004 PowerPoint 2004 (11.0) for Mac OS X Office:Mac 2004
  • 2008 PowerPoint 2008 (12.0) for Mac OS X Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac
  • 2010 PowerPoint 2011 (14.0) for Mac OS X Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac

The presentation can be printed, displayed live on a computer, or navigated through at the command of the presenter. For larger audiences the computer display is often projected using a video projector.

Source: wikipedia.org