iWork '09: The Missing Manual

Creating Self-Playing Slideshows

If letting your iPhone run your slideshow isn’t enough and you want still more automation, Keynote is ready for you. Self-playing or kiosk slideshows put your Keynote presentation on autopilot. They play completely automatically, advancing each slide and build according to the timings you set. Kiosk presentations are usually set to loop, playing over and over again to display your latest product, explain a museum exhibit, or embarrass attendees at your 20th high school reunion.

Tip

Even though these kinds of slideshows are completely automatic, Keynote still responds to certain keyboard commands during the presentation. You can keep viewers from stopping the presentation by requiring a password (see Working with Objects), but they’ll still be able to pause it using the F, B, or W keyboard shortcuts. The only foolproof way to prevent viewers from meddling with the slideshow is to remove the keyboard—or in the case of a laptop, cover it.

Keynote has two flavors of self-playing slideshow:

• Timed slideshows advance automatically based on timings that you provide for individual slides or a standard slideshow-wide setting.

• Recorded slideshows let you make a voice-over narration while you advance through your slideshow; Keynote saves your entire performance and plays back your slides and your silver-voiced narration exactly as you recorded them.

You select one of these slideshow modes by picking a presentation style in the Document Inspector, as you learned way ...