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Why PowerPoint?

To begin with, I’m not aware of any other software that can create fully standalone multimedia interfaces — self-contained, requiring no external host — that are as widely accessible to PC users. While I know of tools like Apache or LibreOffice, they are neither popular nor readily supported in the organisation I work for. PowerPoint, on the other hand, is installed on every machine and regarded as an enterprise-grade solution — stable, secure, and universally accepted.

It’s a shame that the world has largely moved away from SWF and ActionScript. I really enjoyed developing with AS2 and AS3 — Adobe Flash was one of the best animation tools around. I’ve explored Adobe Animate, which remains a good animation platform, but its HTML5 output isn’t consistently reliable across all browsers. In fact, a lot can go wrong with HTML5, especially when you want to create standalone applications — the limitations quickly become apparent.

For me, PowerPoint still ticks all the boxes. It offers an excellent range of illustration tools, works virtually everywhere, and includes a built-in programming language (VBA). These days, it is one of the few remaining standalone multimedia frameworks that is both robust and widely supported.

Over the past six years, I’ve explored various other multimedia development tools — Construct 2, Hippo Animator, Articulate Storyline, and Adobe Captivate — but none have matched the versatility of good old PowerPoint.

The image and video below show an eLearning game I developed as part of a training program for my company. The game is fully interactive, runs from a single slide, and uses VBA to tally scores and update a leaderboard.





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