What's new in ActivePrez (formerly Active Presentation Designer) 1.5
Feb 2, 2011- Installer:
- Prevents installation on 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows.
- Installation files are cleaned more thoroughly on uninstall to prevent mixed versioning and potential PowerPoint crashes.
- Licensing:
- The "Trial Expired" form is now bought in front of the PowerPoint 2010 splash screen to prevent the situation whereby it appears that PowerPoint has crashed when PowerPoint starts. This incorrectly perceived crash happened because the spash screen was sitting above the ActivePresenation modal window and as a result, the task manager showed PowerPoint task as "not responding" which in fact was untrue since the Trial Expired form was waiting for user input but couldn't be seen.
- Ribbon:
- The "About and License" window is now correctly shown when the button is clicked for all supported versions of PowerPoint , even when the trial has expired (previously not working for PowerPoint 2007 and 2010). If there is an issue with the COM add-in (such as being disabled or the wrong version) the "About and License" will show the dialog box "ActivePresentation Designer is unavailable..." with a link to this support page.
- Update and First-Run forms are now bought to the front-most of all applications to prevent user perception that PowerPoint has crashed when in fact the modal window is waiting for user input.
- Menu Bar Designer:
- The add-in now checks to see if the menu bar would appear below the PowerPoint Slide Show Popup Toolbar and if it does, the the popup toolbar information text/hyperlink is displayed below the template selection ComboBox. The text is hyperlinked to this support page.
- The Preview Template button has been removed following user feedback. The Template preview image is now automatically generated when the template selection changes in the ComboBox or anything changes in the Menu Bar Background, Level 1, Level 2 or Level 3 frames.
- Updater:
- The Software Updater now takes care of locales that use decimal separators different from "." (eg. "," for the French locale). This corrects the situation whereby the user would always be told that a new version exists, even if they were using the latest version.
New in ActivePrez (formerly Active Presentation Designer) 1.4 (Feb 2, 2011)
- Initialization: Changed the error message shown when the PowerPoint COM add-in gets disabled so that there is a link to this page to help users re-enable the add-in. The add-in may get disabled by PowerPoint if:
- PowerPoint crashes
- PowerPoint is terminated while the add-in is running.
- Menu Bar Designer:
- New feature added to enable the color to be set to "N" (None). This enables users to set completely transparent menu bars. As a result, 4 x PowerPoint 2003 and 4 x PowerPoint 2007/2010 "NoFill" templates have been removed as they are now redundant and no color can now be applied to all templates.
- New feature added to allow the color of the menu bar separator text/shape to be set.
- Fixed an issue whereby the progress bar appeared to freeze in certain circumstances.
- Fixed an issue which prevented the menu bar background effects (shadow, reflection, glow, soft edge) from working in PowerPoint 2010.
- Templates:
- All templates have been modified to support the new features of: Color = None and Separator Color
- Fixed an issued whereby the template used for the Getting Started Guide was missing from the installation.
- Getting Started Guide: New version included to show all features and update screenshots/text.
- Ribbon: The ActivePresentation ribbon is now shown automatically when running PowerPoint 2010 for the first time after installation of ActivePresentation Designer.
- Export Wizard: This feature is disabled in PowerPoint 2010 as it no longer works due to a Microsoft PowerPoint change. The feature will be re-enabled in a future release when a solution has been found.
- Confidentiality: This feature is disabled in PowerPoint 2010 as it no longer works due to a Microsoft PowerPoint change. The feature will be re-enabled in a future release when a solution has been found.
New in ActivePrez (formerly Active Presentation Designer) 1.3 (Aug 31, 2010)
- Menu Bar Designer: Removed erroneous references to deleted linked slides before entering the menu bar designer.
- Ribbon: Fixed an issue whereby the Create Menu Bar/Edit Menu Bar button was not displaying the correct text (and hence function) under certain conditions.
- Popups: Popups have been considerably enhanced as follows:
- Added a new Popup Link button.
- Added a new Configure button.
- Deleted the previous Manage button (which mixed configuration and linking).
- Selection of only the trigger shape for using the Link Popup and Delete Link buttons is now supported.
- Hidden popup shapes are made visible when the popup link is deleted by selecting only the trigger shape.
- Added a new feature "Hide all popups at start of slide show".
- Fixed a bug whereby the Delete Link button was not being refreshed properly.
- When ActivePresentation Designer is used for the first time in a presentation, using the Link button also enables popups in the presentation (can be disabled in Popups/Configure). This requires that the presentation is saved in a macro supporting format such as: .ppt, .pptm, potm or .ppsm.
- ActivePower: The resentation is required to be saved in a macro supporting format such as: .ppt, .pptm, potm or .ppsm for the following features:
- Popups: Configure, Link
- Presenter Clock: Enable, Configure
- Serial Navigator: Enable, Configure
- Export Wizard
- DirectPrint: Enable, Configure
- Serial Navigator:
- Included slide index in the Serial Navigator list items.
- Set Serial Navigator ComboBox width to half of the previous width.
- ActivePower: When using one of these ActivePower features; Clock, Serial Navigator, Direct Print, the Configure window no longer resets the position, size and formatting of the on-screen elements unless explicitly changed by the user via the corresponding Configure window. Previously, if a user changed the position of the clock (on the slide master) for example, invoking the Configure window for the clock would reset the position.
New in ActivePrez (formerly Active Presentation Designer) 1.2 (Jul 19, 2010)
- Menu Bar Designer: Improvement made to allow the Escape key to be used to cancel the dialog box. Note: if the last user operation was on the Menu Bar Tree then Escape is ignored.
- Templates: Due to a change in the way Microsoft PoerPoint 2010 handles security, the menu bar templates shipped with the product have been internalized within the addin. External templates are still permitted to be installed but may cause eroneous verbose warning messages with PowerPoint 2010.
- Templates: Added 8 new templates (4 each for PowerPoint 2003 and 2007) which allow menu bars to be filled with transparent colour (empty/no bar fill).
- Licensing: On successful license registration, text has been added to show how to remove the trial watermarks.
- Macro Error: A workaround has been added for a PowerPoint bug that causes the the message "The macro cannot be found or has been disabled due to your security settings" to appear under some feature usage combinations.
- Serial Navigator: As a result of fixing the macro error warning message, the Serial Navigator control has had to be moved from the slide master to be replicated on each slide. Fine control of position and size will be added to the configuration window in a future release to avoid having to set each slide individually.
- Popups: Fixed a bug that caused the Popup code to be inserted in a user presentation multiple times.
- Popups: Added a workaround for Popups not showing when trigger shape is clicked in PowerPoint 2007. The issue may be because of an update pushed by Microsoft (KB 982158).
- Popups: Added a workaround for a PowerPoint 2003 rendering issue whereby some popups are revealed from the top edge of the last shape added to the slide. This can manifest itself as an "invisible popup".
- Help: Help file has been updated to align with the release.
New in ActivePrez (formerly Active Presentation Designer) 1.1 (Jun 3, 2010)
- Ribbon: The behavior for checking the status of the main add-in has now been changed to be more intuitive in error conditions.
- Licensing: After entering the correct license key, the Trial form now gets unloaded.
- ActivePower: Fixed a bug whereby the wrong code was being removed from the user's presentation when ActivePower features such as clock, serial navigator, export wizard etc. were disabled.
- Uninstaller: Fixed a bug whereby the feedback form is not displayed.