(UPDATE: All these are now available in Prezi, you don’t need to do the /adam/springrc/ address change)
We have simplified editing, fixed some glitches, and added some new features today – and they make things somewhat different so we thought to post a summary for you. These are not put into prezi.com yet, we would like to get some feedback and kill some bugs.
But you can try them, its safe and backward compatible, won’t harm your existing presentations! To edit with the release candidate updates, add /adam/springrc in the address of your presentation, right after /edit, but before the #39 number.
01 Click on an object to zoom in, click away to zoom out
Now you can zoom out just as easily as you can zoom in – simply click on the background. This activates the ’smart zoom out’ which takes you up one level to the frame above you.
you can also try this here right away: http://prezi.com/20425/view/adam/springrc/#39
02 Drag the background in Place mode to pan
03 Path steps are numbered
04 Overlapping path balls don’t cover each other, once you zoom to them
This needs a little explanation. In a good prezi, one goes to the overview a lot. This used to create overlapping path steps, which were hard to edit. This update fixes this annoyance, but also introduces a new concept – zoom to edit. If you are far far away, you don’t see the details, the path looks simplified, so you can see its structure. If you zoom in, and once you can see the details (currently, of the object in question is larger than 200 pixels on the screen) the path editor automagically lays out the overlapping steps for you. We hope this actually won’t need much explanation, and might introduce this concept on various levels. Think about it: you actually always both zoom to the parts you want to edit, then upgroup, open, etc in various programs – we could simply link if something is editable to its size in your view.
05 Projector sized frames
Hold down shift when drawing any rectangular frame, and Prezi will create a projector sized frame for you. (its 4:3, if you are curious). Most of us work on widescreen laptop, and widescreen projectors won’t become dominant for another 2-3 years, so here is a ‘temporary’ solution for us.
06 Circle frames have a mark at 12:00 so you know their orientation
07 Fullscreen button stays just where you where
Changing to fullscreen used to take you to overview, hence spoil all your surprises in front of your audience. This is history. Surprise them.
08 Press Shift to fade out the Zebra
Zebra is nice, friendly, simple, great to use, but sometimes its in the way. For example, when aligning objects, it covers them. We fade out the Zebra when you drag with it, but now, you can fade out the zebra any time by pressing shift. You can also nudge the selection with the keyboard arrows (this is not new)
Your feedback please!
Please try these updates, let us know how it went, what annoyed, what was nice. We hope to release these into the main editor soon. Please helps us kill those bugs and mistakes.
Thank you for adding the numbers to the path steps. It was getting a little confusing trying to remember the steps I had created. It’s also nice to now have the ability to zoom in on the path to edit. I was having some problems with overlapping paths. Great additions to the product.
This is all great new. You solved several problems I’ve been having and even some I hadn’t noticed having before:)
One more vote for these changes! The ability to drag the background is a step towards the familiar user interfaces. 4:3 frames, circle frame orientation and click to zoom out were on my wishlist. Thx!
Great improvements! Especially the numbering of the path is very helpful when editing and extending Prezis after a while.
The projector sized frames are a great help. I had just thought about how to manage it – and now you are already offering a solution. Thank you so much – not only for the additions, but also for the basic work.
Hi, thanks for these changes. I had a quick look and they are generally cool. Two things:
If you fade out the zebra, any movement using the faded zebra seems to be sticky (to the grid), ie: is jerky. This might be another new feature – it would be quite a good one, but it’s not what I expected.
The full screen still spoils all my surprises
There doesn’t seem to be any change.
I can understand why the circle frames now have an identifier like that. Could it vanish when you actually play the presentation?
Please can you let us show/hide and change colours. Pleeeeeeze. It would make so much difference. (I want a pony too).
Thanks for a wonderful product.
Graham
Thanks all!
Graham, you say:
“If you fade out the zebra, any movement using the faded zebra seems to be sticky (to the grid), ie: is jerky. This might be another new feature – it would be quite a good one, but it’s not what I expected.”
I see, yes, this is an already existing feature, shift also constrains the Zebra movement, rotation, etc. You are right, it’s somewhat inconsistent now…
“The full screen still spoils all my surprises There doesn’t seem to be any change.”
this does work for me… what system are you on?
“I can understand why the circle frames now have an identifier like that. Could it vanish when you actually play the presentation?”
So you find it disturbing?
“Please can you let us show/hide”
how about this method? http://prezi.com/9311
“and change colours.”
coming soon…
All the above updates above fixed most of the problems had/didn’t like about prezi. I havent noticed any bugs yet so i hope u will put it into the prezi.com version soon
I hope u can add a feature were u can choose different colors for your frames and fonts.
Could you make it to where i could use italicized font for genus and species names or underlined or both! Thanks
All the updates are useful especially the numbers of the path steps.
These improvements are very good ideas! I just struggled with overlapping path balls in my presentation, because I wanted to return to the same semi-overview several times. This makes it so much easier.
The numbered path steps as well as the 12.00h mark will help in other projects.
Hi, my system is Windows XP with Flash 10 and Firefox 3. For what it’s worth, going full screen seems to move to the next frame, as if you’d pressed the forward arrow too – I have to press back to get to the start. That’s just what it did before.
I realise that you can ‘hide’ using zoom levels. I just think it would be nice to be able to set pictures, objects and text to become completely invisible at certain levels of zoom (when presenting) – it would open up more scope for patterns at different levels without clutter or artificial zooming. But if no-one else agrees then I’m happy.
Colour change coming? Fantastic. Thanks.
Is it just me or is the quality of imported .png files really disappointing. Is there a better way of importing vector artwork from Fireworks?
(I’ve a job interview Wednesday and I’ll use your wonderful product .. lets see what happens!)
Hi, for vector artwork try to use swf or pdf.
I like the consistency of the shift command to alter what you can do in each new item (does this make sense?)
The pan feature takes a little getting used to; same with the zoom in/out feature. (I kept clicking & expecting to be brought closer; instead, things kept getting teenier & teenier. My bad.)
Numbered path stops: *excellent*
Orientation marks on circle frames: **excellent**
Zebra fade: *excellent*
Projector zoom: a secret worry I was trying to ignore. Nice fix.
Item on my wish list: With the circle frame, could the weight (thickness) of the line be adjustable? Fat, medium, thin? If it’s not feasible to include options, could you please make the default circle line thinner? It’s a total clunky thing right now; I desire an elegant understated frame. Hmm. A thinner path line would also be easier to work with.
Prezi makes me happy. THANKS!
Karen
I have started a few Prezi’s and then end up deleting because I zoom in and then get stuck w/out being able to zoom out again to where I can see the path controls. Just can’t get back to beginning relolution…..
Hi Carolyn,
did this happen with using /adam/springrc ?
I think the changes are great! This is the most dynamic presentation tool I have ever seen! Is there a way to put your presentation to music or sound effects, other than running the music in a separate window? I would love to see that as a feature in the future if you could attach a sound file to a title or image on the path.
Thanks again for the great tools!
I would like a frame with the following functionality:
The frame would be like “from view” frame, but the instant you press “Prezi” or (Esc) it becomes invisible. Like WYSIWYG.
The reason is because sometimes I don’t want a circle, square or any other trigonometric form to enclose my information.
Thanks for a great product!
Doug,
please check http://www.prezi.com/manual
Marcelo
You will be able to make frames fully transparent when the style editor is ready
Thanks Adam
Will eagerly wait for that.
Another thing that occurred to me while doing a presentation is that I like the ability to zoom in on small things. For example having a headline “Goals” and then zooming in to the “o” for the next slide. The problem is, doing that, if the screen is not centered on the “o” goes too fast, and doesn’t really show off all the potential prezi actually has. What I would like is that:
- Either, if prezi knows a big zoom is coming up, it will make it slower so you actually see how coolt it looks.
- Or somehow be able to se how fast the next step in the path will be zoomed in.
I’m not a webdeveloper or programmer and I imagine it takes some time realzing that change. But I’m just throwing ideas
Thanks again!
First, I think you’ve really struck gold with the product. I’ve done a bit of an evangelisation on my blog about it, and I’ll be working on getting my workplace to buy up a few licenses…
On a feedback front, it would be great if there was an easy way to copy and paste various bits of text so you’d have them at the same orientation with the same zoom.
Also, being able to highlight text and change its style from bold to body etc… would be great.
For the projector sized frames, being able to use shift after you start dragging a frame would be helpful. Also, the opposite: being able to release shift while dragging a frame to not draw in 4:3 ratio.
otherwise, the numbered paths and path zooming fix helps A LOT!!!
click away to zoom out makes me happy!
Thanks!
Marcelo,
very good points – motion of the camera is the core spirit of prezi, and we need to make it fit various scenarios. You will also be able to edit that in the future…
Greg, if something is selected, press ‘d’ and it duplicates. you can also press ctrl+c ctrl+v for copy paste (but you have to use ctrl even on Mac)
You can sort of free hand highlight with the boldest pen tool, we use it for highlighting.
We just updated this page: http://www.prezi.com/manual
More formating updates are coming later…
When I’m editing paths using the new numbered nodes (great feature) it would be useful if the ‘u’ button would allow an undo of a node placement.
Also, I find myself wanting to zoom WHILE HOLDING A NODE because I may want to grab a node in a very small section, then zoom out to a very big section that I can’t see when I’m zoomed in enough to pick up the small section’s node.
ALSO I have found that after editing a path item, then undoing a path placement, I am no longer able to pan and zoom around my Prezi. Bug?
Hi
I use Prezi for presentations in our company. But parts of the information in my presentations are confidential. Since the editor is online and the presentations stored on your servers, I can’t use them… Will there be an editor I can use on my PC?
Nice new features. I really like the numbers in path steps. The “stick what you see” hardly needed.
Excellent updates. I particularly struggled with the path points not being numbered and overlapping each other and wound up having to redo my path a couple times. Granted this doesn’t take a long time, but still.
The only other thing I would mention? Well, I found zoom out with the keyboard/mouse combo was buggier when path was activated.
I’ve been using prezi to make presentations for my 6th graders. It works great on Mac and Linux; but these updates will definitely make it more efficient to make presentations.
I hope that prezi will remain free for educational uses!
“Amazing! These fix those little things that so far separated prezi from perfection.
[...] path steps are numbered, you can do projector proportioned frames, and many more. You can see the details about that in this previous post [...]
We ordered Prezi Pro, yearly but to my surprise, all of the projects we were working on are unavailable (I see them in the UI but they are empty) plus I cannot download the desktop version. Hmmmmmm … what now? Thanks.
These changes sound great. However, I’m still hoping for the ability to change my text and background to RGB values. Will this be possible?
Thanks,
Anthony
Hi Anthony,
Style editing is coming….
New to Prezi – loving it. Loving the ideas. Would love to be able to select my own font and style but I understand that’s coming. Keep up the good work. Once I’m confident enough with it I’ll be getting the Pro version
Love the updates – and I have a request about the path tool:
It’s a two – parter:
1 – Could you make the ‘in between’ path node handles closer to the numbered point either instead of or in addition to the one that shows up halfway between two points?
When you’re laying the path, you often have to move from something very zoomed in to something very zoomed out – or vice versa. When that’s the case, the path node you have to grab is often several screens away from the object you want to stick it to. This makes it very awkward to place the path.
2 – could you create a ’sticky grab’ for the path nodes? Right now, you click and hold to drag and move the path nodes. That means that if you need to do any navigation whilst holding a node, it becomes an operation of dexterity where you can’t let go of the mouse button. And when you do, BAM! The path clicks to any big object you happen to be floating over at the time.
It would be great if you could just click on a node and then it would be stuck to your pointer whilst you navigate any way you want until you ‘click it off’ on to your destination object.
Finally (and I guess this makes it a 3-parter) it would be very useful to be able to just hit ‘u’ while in path edit mode to undo an accidentally placed path element without exiting out, hitting undo, then getting back in path mode.
Those tweaks would really help the path workflow.
Keep up the great work. I just love the ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhhs’ I get at work when I wheel out a Prezi. Nice!
Greg, these are good points, great ideas.
re 2, in many occasions I need to ‘take’ thing with me in prezi. there is lots of ‘traveling’, zooming, panning, and we should solve that its easy to carry things along. path nodes, objects, etc.
maybe we should have an interface element, a shelf, where you can put things on, and zoom pan freely, and once you arrived, you can take them off the shelf? like a visual cut and paste.
Geof, I am really sorry if our plans where not clear, the enjoy license doesn’t contain the Desktop version. The pro does. Please see here: http://www.Prezi.com/upgrade
Wow, I’m having a ball with this program. Thanks!
I also have a couple of problems:
- the frames don’t center on the my screen. I have to shift everything down and to the left, and then I have partial brackets or whatever sticking in the frame. Any idea why this keeps happening?
- some text will suddenly turn from black to green. Am I accidentally hitting some keyboard shortcut?
I’m not sure if this is the right place to post questions, but I’d appreciate any help. Thanks again for the great product!
Love it thus far! – would really need custom fonts and coloring (font and background).
Keep up the good work.
Most of the time I don