Review: Apple is stressing Keynote's ease of use, billing the application as a means for anyone to create "cinema-quality presentations."

The debut of Apples iWork 08 bundles across-the-board improvements, such as new templates & text effects, & a few snazzy bells & whistles to its presentation program, Keynote.

As with the rest of the iWork 08 suite, Apple is stressing Keynotes ease of use, billing the application as a means for anyone to create "cinema-quality presentations."

eWEEK Labs tested out a number of the applications souped up features, such as Keynotes newly unveiled Smart Builds tool, which enables users to create animations with a minimum of hassle. I was impressed with the Smart Builds tool, & found that it makes good its promises of sophistication without excessive complication, but the feature took a bit of practice to nail down.

Another significant new feature of Keynote is the programs point A to point B animation, which enables users to move object, image, shape, chart, & the like from one location on a slide to another.

For all the presentation-building magic that Apple has managed to pack into Keynote 08, the trick that this application doesnt pull off seamlessly is compatibility with Microsofts Office file formats. Keynote will open & export to Offices Powerpoint file formats, but—as with every non-Microsoft consumer of Offices formats that eWEEK Labs has tested—certain formatting inconsistencies seem impossible to avoid.

iWork 08 is reasonably priced, at $79 (or free with the purchase of any new Mac Laptop). The suite requires Mac OS X version 10.4.10 or later.

Keynote Presentation

The first thing I worked through during my testing of Keynote 08 was the heavily hyped Smart Builds feature that enables users to include animated elements in presentations. According to Apples Web site, all I needed to do to achieve fast animation would be to simply drop a photograph or any other image of my choosing into the appropriate spot in my presentation.

I opened up the Smart Builds feature by clicking on its icon located in Keynotes toolbar which brought forth a separate pane for working with & customizing animated elements, along with a second pane, called a photo window, that appeared at the bottom of the screen. I could drag photos or images into the photo window from Apples iPhoto Library, or from OS Xs Finder file Manage.

I dragged a series of test images from iPhoto folder into a series of rectangles that appeared in the photo window at the bottom of my screen. As I dragged an image into one of the rectangles, another, blank rectangle automatically appeared. I dragged in four images to fill out a spinning cube animation, which Id selected from a drop-down menu within the Smart Builds action pane. From there, I was able to further modify the animated object by specifying its direction, alignment, & perspective.

The action pane also let me further define whether I wanted the cube to move from left to right, or how many times I wanted the cube to spin before it settled on displaying one of the four images it was built to showcase. I could set different timings for each photo by opening the aptly-named Build Order drawer from the Smart Build pane. I could also select whether I wanted the images Id selected to be scaled to a common size by selecting a box located inside the photo window.

To remove an image from the build, all I had to do was grab it & drag it out of the photo window, or right-click the image & select delete. To rearrange the order in which I wanted the images appear, I simply dragged the image to place within the rectangle sequence where I wanted it to appear. The entire process ran rather smoothly, & it was actually pretty fun to do. Whats more, the resulting slide was significantly snazzier than my non-animated slides.

I also tested Keynote 08s groovy A-to-B animation feature. I highlighted an image on my test presentation that I wished to move across the slide, opened Keynotes Build Inspector tool, & clicked the action button. From here I was able to choose the "move" option listed under the Effect menu. Once I did, the image appeared on my presentation slide with a red line that connected my original image, or Point A, to its next destination, Point B. Point B was designated by a "ghosted" image of my original image. I could also add a series of other destinations.

When I viewed my slide with this added effect, the result was great. I could choose to have my image move from point-to-point on either a straight or curved path when I clicked the Path option located on the action pane. Even better, I was able to shape the path of my image any way I chose by grabbing one of the nodes used to illustrate the images destined path. I could make the path as curvy & unique as I wanted.