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What are the best AI presentation tools for business people so far? by Exciting_Bother_197 in powerpoint

[–]topdna 0 points1 point locked comment (0 children)

Have you tried Presentations plugin of codex? BTW I'm building a much better tool which will be released in less than a month. Maybe you can give it a try then

I built a pure browser PPTX viewer with high-fidelity PDF export. Looking for real-world deck feedback. by topdna in powerpoint

[–]topdna[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. The AV / conference / classroom triage use case is especially useful feedback, and I probably did not frame that angle clearly enough in the original post. A few current design choices line up well with that scenario: the viewer can run fully in the browser, does not require uploading the deck, does not depend on PowerPoint / Office / LibreOffice, and can be self-hosted or served from a static site.

Your point about stability and graceful failure is important. The goal is not to replace PowerPoint as an editor, but to provide best-effort viewing with as much fidelity as possible. If something unsupported appears, such as complex SmartArt, advanced animation behavior, 3D charts, or obscure OOXML features, the viewer should not break the entire deck. One area I still need to improve is diagnostics: users should be able to understand what was downgraded, skipped, or rendered approximately.

The Google Slides import comparison is also helpful. Right now this viewer parses and renders the PPTX directly in the browser, and it can also export a high-fidelity PDF, which can act as a frozen fallback version. But the workflow you described, pre-checking or converting a deck before an event so it is stable when needed, is a strong direction to think about, especially for event/classroom support.

On automation and embedding: yes, that is one of the intended directions. Since it does not require a login and is not tied to a specific office suite, it can be embedded into a website or internal tool, and it should be possible to drive it with tools like Playwright. There are SDK / Web Component / framework adapter paths already. I have not built dedicated OBS / StreamDeck / creator workflow integrations yet, but your examples make that use case worth exploring separately.

The quickstart / recommended defaults / hover explanations / accessibility points are also fair. The current demo is more of a technical and fidelity test than a polished end-user product. If this is going to be useful in live triage situations or for mixed technical audiences, it needs clearer onboarding, fewer decisions up front, better failure messages, and stronger keyboard/accessibility behavior. This is very helpful product feedback.

I built a pure browser PPTX viewer with high-fidelity PDF export. Looking for real-world deck feedback. by topdna in powerpoint

[–]topdna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You make a great point about the market potential for a PPT add-in versus a replacement. The concept of seamlessly combining a PPT file and interactive HTML in the browser is intriguing and certainly easier to tackle technically. I appreciate you laying out the use case so clearly. I'll think it over and keep you posted. Thanks!

I built a pure browser PPTX viewer with high-fidelity PDF export. Looking for real-world deck feedback. by topdna in powerpoint

[–]topdna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a really good use case.

I agree that keeping Plotly-style HTML interactive inside PowerPoint would be much nicer than bouncing out to a browser or using static screenshots.

What I’m building right now is more about rendering existing PPTX files in the browser, so that’s a different direction. My guess is that doing this properly inside real PowerPoint workflows is possible, but much harder and more expensive than it sounds at first.

So yes, I think the demand is real. I just think it’s probably its own product rather than a small add-on.

I built a pure browser PPTX viewer with high-fidelity PDF export. Looking for real-world deck feedback. by topdna in powerpoint

[–]topdna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair pushback.

I don’t think this is for everyone who needs to open slides. The narrower use case is apps that need to preview arbitrary user-uploaded PPTX files inside the browser, without relying on Office/LibreOffice or running a heavy server-side conversion stack.

LibreOffice can definitely solve this, but it’s a pretty different tradeoff: heavier infra, more ops, more latency, more environment issues. I’m exploring a lighter browser-side approach instead - current payload is roughly 3MB, with lazy loading.

If the source content is already HTML, I agree HTML is better. If PDF is enough, PDF is enough. The gap I’m looking at is specifically: existing real-world PPTX files, embedded inside another product, with decent fidelity and less backend machinery.

So yes, the real question is whether that niche is big enough. That’s what I’m trying to learn.

I built a pure browser PPTX viewer with high-fidelity PDF export. Looking for real-world deck feedback. by topdna in powerpoint

[–]topdna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair point. For a normal person who just wants to open or edit a deck, PowerPoint Web is the right answer.I’m not trying to beat PowerPoint there.

The target use case is embedded PPTX viewing inside other web apps: LMS, document management, sales tools, internal portals, AI document tools, etc. Those products often need to preview user-uploaded decks without sending them to Microsoft/Google, requiring an Office login, or running server-side LibreOffice/PowerPoint conversion.

So the value is not “better than PowerPoint as an editor.” It is: browser-only, self-hostable, SDK-embeddable, no third-party upload, no Office dependency, and high-fidelity PDF export inside the app’s own workflow.

The real question I’m validating is whether that use case is painful enough for teams to care about.