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Play The Web 2010SE

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Play The Web 2010SE

Display a PowerPoint slide show on a digital signage system

The PowerPoint slide show format is useful because you can set timing for each individual slide.
Doing this, the slide show will run by itself with automatic timings.
Also, PowerPoint is a powerful tool that can be used by any person in your organization.
So, with PowerPoint, information is easy to update and publish.

With Play The Web, you can retrieve a PowerPoint slide show from a file or web server and use it on a digital signage system.

When this file is updated on the server, Play The Web automatically retrieves the newer version and displays it.

To display a PowerPoint presentation, you need either to install Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer on the computer.

Prepare a .PPS file with PowerPoint

Take a PowerPoint file and prepare the file by recording display time for every slide.
Select "Rehearse Timings" from the "Slide show" menu in PowerPoint and select a delay for each slide.

Set slide show options in "Slide show" menu, "Set up show" item:
Do not check the "Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)" check box.
Uncheck the "Loop continuously until 'Esc'" option.
Click OK to validate.

Also, to make PowerPoint 2003 automatically quit when the last slide has been displayed, select the "Options" item in the "Tools" menu.
In the "View" tab, "Slide Show" pane, uncheck the "End with black slide" option to quit PowerPoint after the last slide of each slide show. Click OK.

With PowerPoint 2007, you should perform the following operations to ensure that the software automatically quit when the last slide has been displayed:
Click on the "Office button" and on the "PowerPoint Options at the bottom of the dialog box. Then, click on the "Advanced" option in the left pane. Scroll the right pane and uncheck the "End with black slide" option. Click OK.

Save the slide show as a .pps file and store it on a web server that can be reached by every user.

Display a .PPS file in Play The Web

Then, update your Play The Web settings: in the Configuration dialog box, switch to the Pages tab.
Open the Properties dialog box and point to the PowerPoint file you just stored on a web server.
For instance:

http://www.play-the-web.com/samples/ptw.pps

Check the "Create a local copy of this page or file" option.
The path and file name of the copy are then displayed in the dialog box.
Make sure the "Run as a separate process" option is checked.
With this option, Play The Web will launch PowerPoint in a slide show mode on the retrieved file.

Because the file to display is a PowerPoint file (.PPS), Play The Web suggests the following command line to display it in show mode (/s parameter):

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE" /s "%1"

You can use this default command line, or use another one. For instance, if the PowerPoint Viewer in installed in the same folder than PowerPoint, type the following command line:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\PPTVIEW.EXE" "%1"

Check the "Display until separate process ends" check box. With this option checked, the software will wait for the end of the separate process before displaying the next page or file in the page loop.

Set a maximal display time for the PowerPoint slide show. What you type here should be greater or equal than the sum of all slides timings.

The PowerPoint slide show will be displayed until its end or for the maximum delay specified. When the slide show ends, Play The Web will move to the next page or file in the page list. If this is the single .PPS file in the presentation, Play The Web will request a newer version of the .PPS file on the web server, if there is any.

Click OK to close the Properties dialog box, and OK again to close the Configuration dialog box.

When Play The Web will be launched, the page will be downloaded and stored locally in the Windows temporary path.

Update the .PPS file through the network

When the .pps file is updated on the server, the software automatically retrieves the newer version and always displays up-to-date information.

This feature is available even if you create a local copy of the .PPS file.

Therefore, you get a digital signage system with automatic content update from a central repository.

Try it!

Click here to run a sample.

Enter the address of a PowerPoint slideshow (.pps file) located on the web or on a file server:

Display .PPS files from a given directory

You can use Play The Web to display all .pps files from a given directory:
in the Configuration dialog box, select the Pages tab.
Click on the "Insert" button to open the "Properties" dialog box.
In the "Properties" dialog box, type the path of the directory containing PowerPoint files followed by a "*.pps" file mask.
For instance:

c:\pps\*.pps

Make sure the "Run as a separate process" option is checked. Doing this, Play The Web will launch Microsoft PowerPoint instead of displaying the slide show embedded in Internet Explorer which is not working very well.

Also, check the "Display until separate process ends" option to ensure Microsoft PowerPoint automatically quits at the end of each slide show.

If you want to display files stored in sub-directories, check the "Include sub-directories" check box.

Display .PPS files downloaded from a web folder

Play The Web is able to download PowerPoint .pps files from a web site and display these files using Microsoft PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer.

For instance, if you have an undefined count of .pps files located on a web server, like the following folder:

http://www.vaugouin.com/pps/

You can include the following properties in the page loop of Play The Web:

With these settings, Play The Web will automatically retrieve the list of files stored in the given folder of the web server.

Each file will be downloaded and displayed using the default application based on file extension.

Because the web folder contains links to .pps files but also links to sort the file list on different fields, it is necessary to exclude these links through the "Exclude" tab:

Also, because the content of the web folder may change and some files can appear or disappear, you need to set a minimum size for a file to be downloaded through the Update tab:

For instance, set a minimum size of 10000 characters minimum to avoid handling of a not found (error 404) error page as a valid .pps file. The value set here should be greater than the actual size of an error page.

Click here to run this sample.

PowerPoint or PowerPoint viewer?

If you are using Microsoft Office 2000, you should know about a referenced bug in the Microsoft knowledge base:
PPT2000: Screen saver is reset to None after you run .PPS or Use /s switch (Q264926)

Solutions:

• Install Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 2 or a newer version of Microsoft Office.
• Or use Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer (PPView97.exe) instead of Microsoft PowerPoint to display .pps files. This program is able to display PowerPoint 97, 2000, XP or 2003 files.

Hide main window

If you get a black empty screen instead of the PowerPoint presentation, you should check the "Hide main window when a separate process is launched" option in the "Layout" tab.

With this option enabled, the Play The Web main window becomes invisible when PowerPoint is launched. So, the PowerPoint window cannot be hidden by the software black main window.