LibreOffice Impress is an Open Source version of Presentation Software.
Presentation software is what people use to create slides of text and graphics when giving a presentation, lecture, or talk. They create the presentation on the computer and connect that computer to a projector to show slides of text and graphics that will help them explain their talk.
LibreOffice Impress is similar to Power Point and somewhat compatible. It can read in some PowerPoint presentations and templates and LibreOffice Impress presentations can be opened in Power Point, they may not look exactly the same. Please, don't open you LibreOffice Impress document with Power Point in front of people until you've had a chance to see what it will look like. It might look fine, but it may also look disastrous.
LibreOffice Impress runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. I am using a Linux Mint 17.3 64 bit operating system for this series. LibreOffice Impress may look slightly different on your operating system, a lot of that will depend on your operating system, and the icons you are using.
LibreOffice Impress can also be used to create a slide-show by setting the slides to change by a given amount of time and transitions can be added between slides.
LibreOffice Impress also allows you to draw right on the presentation while you are giving it. This can be handy if you want to circle or draw attention to a specific area on a slide.
The tool-tips are turned on by clicking the checkbox under Tools, Options, LibreOffice, General
The icons can be changed by going to Tools, Options, View, then there is a drop-down under User Interface, there is a drop-down under Icon size and style.
Linux Mint 17.3 only had the default icon set - using the Linux specific software manager, the LibreOffice tango icons were added.
We get familiar with Libreoffice Impress by learning what is in the LibreOffice Impress window.
The title bar is the name of the the top of the LibreOffice Impress window. Just below the title bar is the Menu Bar – The menu bar has drop-downs that we will be using throughout this video tutorial series.
Below the Menu bar are toolbars. The toolbars can be rearranged, by grabbing the handle and placed out in the open (floating) or docked to one of the sides, top or bottom.
Right clicking on a toolbar fill-handle will bring up a context menu. We can close the toolbar from the context menu and open it again from the View – Toolbars, and selecting the toolbar we want to turn on (or turn off)
The Slide Pane is on the left of the screen, we look at resizing it, showing and hiding it, and turning it on or off. The workspace is the large box in the middle of the screen we are only using the Normal tab at this time.
The Sidebar is on the right and can be shown or hidden like the Slide Pane. The Sidebar can be turned off and on from the View menu and can also be moved around to the screen like a toolbar and docked to the left or right side of the Impress window.
The status bar is at the bottom of the screen with information about what we are doing at the moment in the lower left, then some positioning information in the middle, what slide we are on, and the lower right corner has a zoom control.
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