Presentation Systems

Commercial presentation packages such as Aldus Persuasion and Lotus Freelance allow novice users to create presentations using text, graphics, scanned images, and animations with only minimal training. Presentations are typically linear sequences of information, so the interfaces for users have often been organised along the time dimension. However, presentations on the computer do not have to be limited to sequential display. Current presentation packages allow users to construct interactive, i.e., nonlinear, presentations that more closely resemble those produced by conventional authoring systems.
The requirement to deal more explicitly with the time dimension became even stronger as
time-based media such as audio and video segments became available for presentations.
New user interface metaphors were developed to allow users to organize their material along these lines.