Di's Victorian Vexes

Since I am massively procrastinating today with regards to my playing, I thought I'd do some more thinking about scribd.

Thanks everyone for testing it out for me.  It seems everyone was able to view it alright and that there were very few problems.  Some of you still prefer SlideShare, which doesn't surprise me since I think I still prefer it too.

Scribd definitely offers more fliexibilty when it comes to reading, which is good and might appease those who don't like using SlideShare, but apart from Lea, no one said they definitely prefer it.

Mystery had some problems reading the text, but is able to work round this, which is good, but is a bit of a bad point if she has to do that.  The question is, how many people will have to work round scribd, and how many people already work round SlideShare?

My other main concern was the picture quality.  it is certainly better in full screen mode, compared to the embed, so those who prefer to read in the embed will miss out, but that's their decision.  I'll post a little note at the top of each post stating that it is best viewed in full screen, and then it's up to the reader.

Ori found that the picture quality was better, most found there was no difference, I've found it is worse.  It's not a great deal worse, but the pictures on scribd are slightly more blurry than the pictures on SlideShare.  I think that this is down to individual configurations and I can't possibly get it exactly right for everyone.  What I'm thinking of doing though, is sharpening the pictures slightly when I resize them and see how that looks.

One thing I do find very annoying, is the fact that the menu bar at the top doesn't disappear in full screen mode.  It makes the full screen on scribd smaller than it is on SlideShare, and I wonder if that is why I'm finding the pictures are clearer on SlideShare.  I use the size slide and size pictures I do, because that is what looks clear on my screen when I view the ppt, I'm not seeing them at that size on scribd, whereas I do on SlideShare.

So, what is my decision?  I'm going to do a test with sharpened pictures, but at the moment I'm hedging towards switching to scribd, but also keeping SlideShare.  Basically I'm thinking that I will post the scribd as an embed (with a disclaimer that it is best viewed in full screen), with a link to the SlideShare version below, just like so:  A Victorian Legacy - Chapter 1 The Beginning.

EDIT: I've done my test using sharpened pictures, and the results seem comparable to the quality of picture I see on SlideShare.  I doubt I'm going to go and sharpen all the pictures in my existing chapters because it's too much work, and I'm probably the only one who will know the difference, but future chapters will get this treatment.  If any one wants to see my second test, it's here.

I'm still open to thoughts, so yell if you have any.

Ok, I've been continuing to experiment with Slideshare and PowerPoint. I've not been able to recreate Gin's problem using my brother's laptop: it puts white bars down the sides, rather than stretching the picture to the full width of the screen. Since I think that that stretching might be what's causing the distortion for Gin, I've changed my slide size to see if that makes a difference, but obviously I don't want to create more distortion for other people sooo...

Please can you all watch the following slideshow and let me know:

Are you getting any distortion?
Are the pictures clear?
Answers to any other questions I asked in the presentation.





Thanks.