Tweet Basic difference between slide transition effects and animation effects

Slide transitions are the animation effects that are applied to whole slide whereas animation effects are applied to objects (text, shape, picture etc.) on a slide. For a slide you can have only one transition effect while each object on the slide can have multiple animation effects.

Transition effects appear in PowerPoint slideshow view when slides change from one to the next. Like animation effects we can control the speed of each slide transition effect, and we can also add music or sound. Video below should help you understand the difference:

Transition and animation effects provide visual impact and  grab the audience's attention but when to use them and when not entirely depends upon your content and target audience. It's advisable not to overdo animations or slide transitions and also to stick to one transition effect throughout the slideshow because your audience may find it annoying and distracting. A balanced use of animations and slide transitions can lead to effective presentations which will  keep your audience attentive and awake.

Tweet Google adds animations and transitions to presentations

Google today released an upgraded version of Google presentations. Google presentations now support most of the basic animation effects like fly, appear, zoom, spin  in addition to slide transitions. With this release Google has narrowed down the feature gap between Google presentations and other online or desktop presentation applications.

What's new in Google presentations?
Google has added more than 50 new features including real-time collaboration:

• Transitions to move between slides with simple fades or spicier 3D effects
• Animations to add emphasis or to make your slides more playful
• New themes to create beautiful presentations with distinct visual styles
• Drawings to build new designs, layouts, and flowcharts within a presentation
• Rich tables with merged cells and more options for adding style to your data

Google presentations are now as good as Microsoft PowerPoint 
Since most of the people use just the basic animation effects like fly,appear, disappear this release will certainly eat the market share of other online presentation creation tools and my be PowerPoint too. Google presentations now has a option to download the presentations as PPTX. A presentation created with Google presentation work just fine in Microsoft PowerPoint along with animation effects.

The day, Google adds option to add audio and record narrations, the competition for Microsoft PowerPoint will really be tough considering the free versus paid scenario.

How to enable new presentation features?
Most probably you will see an alert to enable new presentation on Google docs home page but if you don't see that, you can enable it from Documents and settings.

• Click the setting icon(Gear icon on top right). 
• Select "Documents and Settings".
• Click Editing tab.
• Tic the check-box "Create new presentations using the latest version of the presentation editor" and save.

Newly added features will only work for new presentations you create.

A presentation created with Google presentations

Tweet PowerPoint 2010 to offer 3D slidehows

Microsoft is all set to change the way you use animation effects in PowerPoint slides. Everything in 2010 slide show (text, shapes, animations, and more) is rendered in full 3D using your machine’s graphics card. This was announced by Microsoft PowerPoint team on their blog.

PowerPoint's graphics engine is completely rebuilt using DirectX and will offer:

· Fully hardware-accelerated rendering engine
· New transition effects and an updated user interface
· Revamped animation effects and a brand new UI (timelines!)
· Animation Painter (copy your animations between objects)
· Choreograph animations with multimedia

Here is one video showing 3D capabilities of PowerPoint 2010