Most of us at one time or another has had to give a presentation - for a project, a company, or something else; we have all used PowerPoint (or other desktop applications such as OpenOffice and KeyNote) in these presentations.

We are all familiar with PowerPoint presentations, maybe even "too familiar." We've seen too many PowerPoint presentations, but only few great presenters. It's not a PowerPoint problem though as it's just a tool, and it dominates desktop presentations for a reason.

It's fine for what it was originally designed for: "Creating on the desktop - presenting on the desktop."

But what about presenting on the Web? Web publishing features were added to PowerPoint about 10 years ago, and in a Web 1.0 way (someone may say "old dog - new tricks").

An alternative way would be to "Create on the Web - present on the Web"? That's the Web 2.0 way, or "New Web" way.

There are Zoho, ThinkFree, and few more Web applications in this space. These applications do a good job imitating the desktop applications on the Web. It seems like a good idea - creating a Web clone of PowerPoint. Users would know what to expect - so it would be easy for them to adopt it.

But this approach could be both good and bad. Some design decisions in PowerPoint are good; some, questionable; and some, not portable to the Web. Besides, unlike on the desktop, PowerPoint is not a de-facto standard for a Web presentation.

And there's a reason for that too.

Let's Dig from the Other Side
How about trying a new approach - by designing from the Web side? Let's start from scratch on the Web and create a Web-native application, pretending we've never seen PowerPoint before. Maybe we'll invent something interesting and useful.

So we created Spresent - A Presentation Tool for the New Web.

Desktop vs. a Web Application
Most likely the Web platform will not replace the desktop, but would complement it. However, the Web looks more attractive to developers at this time and that's where the innovation happens. Table 1 provides are some of the key differences in presentation graphics application development.

We started Spresent back in 2001 as a Web application, then we ported it to the desktop, and then back to the Web. Soon we'll release a desktop version again. The desktop is a secondary priority platform for us, but it looks like we can't escape it - yet.

This pattern of "going back and forth" would probably apply to some other Office 2.0 apps; users would need both the desktop and the Web version.

As we know now, not every application can be originated on the desktop. For example, blogs, wikis, and some other wonderful Web 2.0 apps were not ported from the desktop.

The Web application market is still young and it's everyone's game.

Office 2.0 and the Enterprise
Recently the enterprise market started adopting Web 2.0 applications. That was inevitable and it would accelerate Web innovation even further over the desktop. In the early Web days an enterprise wouldn't trust anybody to host confidential data. Not anymore.

"What kind of app is missing, from the New Web landscape?" asked Jeremy Geelan in his blog. We think the answer is a Web presentation tool.

It should be a rich Internet application presenting rich Internet content - multimedia and dynamic content.

Content Publishing - Old Formats
"Content is king" as we know, and Web content has evolved fast. Web publishing became very easy with blogs and photo-sharing sites. But the Web content format didn't change much; it's still the same - HTML and some images - as it was 10 years ago.

If you have a story to tell on the Web, it would still look about the same is it did 10 years ago. That's because HTML is the native format of the browser. It's not going to change any time soon, though now HTML is under the strong influence of XML and CSS.

Content Publishing - New Formats
Then along came YouTube and podcasting with new, rich content and the publishing path "Create on the desktop - publish to the Web."

To view rich content, a browser needs a media player. Thanks to Flash, we all have media players pre-installed in our browsers, even on mobile devices. Flash is the ultimate media player on the Web, and it probably won't change any time soon.

Flash Platform Phenomena
As a runtime environment, Flash has won the Web; it's in the process of winning the mobile platform and is about to penetrate the desktop.

Here are some of the key benefits to using Flash as an engine for a presentation application:

• Free, robust, vector-based graphics engine (great quality, scalable for any screen)
• Open file format (SWF)
• Support for rich media formats: animations, images, video, and audio
• Ninety-eight percent computer market penetration; cross-platform
• Built-in solid scripting engine for developing RIAs
• Mobile and TV ready: 100M+ devices on the market and growing fast
• No other graphics engine alternative to Flash anytime soon
• Great development environment