Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro

2017-07-07 02:10:07

Chapter 10 - PowerPoint Basics

While most people view PowerPoint as a tool to create powerful presentations, a savvy developer sees lots of possibilities for visually appealing output options that aren t available with the FoxPro report writer.

PowerPoint is an excellent tool for creating visual presentations comprised of slides, where each slide contains elements of text, graphics, and even multimedia. Rich formatting features provide control over the appearance of the slide. You can change the color, font, and size of text objects, even down to changing the attributes for each character. Numerous shape elements are provided, with a myriad of formatting options, such as gradient or textured background fills, a variety of borders, and the ability to include text within the shape.

With the power and capability of computers today, and the population s desire for high-tech visual presentations, PowerPoint has the ability to add the bells and whistles that appeal to today s audiences. Objects can be set to flash, play sounds, navigate to other slides in the slide show, run macros, or even run external programs when the user moves the mouse over them, or clicks on them. In fact, you can set different actions for a mouse-over than a mouse-click. You ll feel like a Hollywood producer when you choose one of a variety of wipes, fades, and sound effects to fire for each slide as it transitions from one to the next.

PowerPoint also has tools to assist the presenter, such as storing notes for each slide. These notes can be geared for the speaker, or they can be printed to hand out to the audience. The slide show itself can be printed out in a number of formats, from one on a page to nine thumbnails on a page. With a little imagination, PowerPoint is a very valuable output alternative for FoxPro programs.

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