ABOUT POWERPOINT

Microsoft PowerPoint is a slide show presentation program developed by Microsoft. It was officially launched on May 22, 1990, as a part of the Microsoft Office suite.

HISTORY :

Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called "Presenter", developed by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin of Forethought, Inc. In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins. 

In August of the same year,  Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($29.1 million in present-day terms), and became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which continued to develop the software further. PowerPoint was officially launched on May 22, 1990, the same day that Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

PowerPoint introduced many new changes with the release of PowerPoint 97. Prior to PowerPoint 97, presentations were linear, always proceeding from one slide to the next. PowerPoint 97 incorporated the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language, underlying all macro generation in Office 97, which allowed users to invoke pre-defined transitions and effects in a non-linear movie-like style without having to learn programming.
PowerPoint 2000 (and the rest of the Office 2000 suite) introduced a clipboard that could hold multiple objects at once. Another change was that the Office Assistant was changed to be less intrusive.


PowerPoint 2002 massively overhauled the animation engine, allowing users to create more advanced and custom animations.
As of 2012, various versions of PowerPoint claim ~95% of the presentation software market share, with installations on at least 1 billion computers. Among presenters world-wide, this program is used at an estimated frequency of 350 times per second


OPERATION

PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or "slides".

The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector. A better analogy would be the "foils" (or transparencies/plastic sheets) that are shown with an overhead projector, although they are in decline now. 

Slides may contain text, graphics, sound, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely. 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. Slides can also form the basis of webcasts.

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.
Filename extension .ppt, .pptx, .pps, or .ppsx

LATEST VERSION-
2013 PowerPoint 2013 (version 15;)

Editing & Composition

  • While the specifics regarding feature integration may vary, all recent releases of PowerPoint allow users to embed audio, video, images, and text within presentations. More recent releases allow for rudimentary editing and compression of media assets as well as a few more advanced options, ie. artistic filters, transition animations, and video effects.

Presentation

  • The ability to present material to an audience is where PowerPoint earns its industry-standard reputation. Years ago, someone would have to place and remove individually printed acetate sheets (or slides) from an "overhead" projector. Now a presenter can advance virtual slides using a mouse, keyboard, or handheld device. With embedded audio and video, the presenter can easily control a complete and organized presentation from start to finish.

Minimum Requirements

  • The computer upon which PowerPoint is installed must meet certain minimum specifications. This ensures that the software can run properly. The ideal machine would have at least a 500 MHz processor with 512MB RAM, 3G of disk space, a 1024x576 display with DirectX9 and 64M video RAM. This is a low requirement as most relatively new machines are much better equipped.


Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_7302931_features-ms-powerpoint.html