Using Keynote to create Flash
Today’s post is a Flash that shows a few effects you can create using Keynote, a slideshow product for the Mac (edit in May 2009: doesn’t work with Keynote 09! Only Keynote 08). For more examples of Flashes created with Keynote, see the following posts:
Keynote is a handy way to create standalone Flash interactives that you provide as mini-courses or include in a larger course. For example, you could quickly build some Flashes with Keynote, then include them in an Articulate Presenter course. These days, I’m putting short Flashes in a wiki-based course and having a great time doing it.
I wouldn’t recommend using Keynote to develop an entire course–managing a lot of slides would be cumbersome. Plus, annoyingly, you can’t embed a Flash within the Flash. (I didn’t test other movie formats.)
That’s me playing the banjo. Banjo jokes welcome and encouraged.
on October 8th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Cool. Hopefully someone from Microsoft has a mac and is playing with Keynote:) By the way, I took your .swf output and added it to Articulate Presenter to see how the swf plays inside Presenter. We get a lot of people asking about keynote and using the swfs that it creates. I’ll send you the published files. Here’s a link to the demo.
on October 9th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Tom, thanks for putting the Keynote Flash in Presenter. I noticed that in both approaches–embedding the Flash and linking to its web version–the builds and animation slowed down a bit. This would be something to consider when creating the Flash in Keynote.
I used .5-second builds; if I remember correctly from my original tests, you can go as low as .25 seconds and have the build or animation export properly.
on October 11th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Hey, you’re pretty good at the banjo!
on October 16th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
The banjo was you! Wow! Multi-talented you are! Awesome! I want to see a post now about how banjo playing and elearning development now
on October 17th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Thanks, banjo fans! Someday I should do a post showing the gajillions of ways you can learn to play the banjo–a banjo player’s “personal learning environment.”
on December 11th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
MORE BANJO PLEASE! you are indeed awesome. I own a banjo….
As for banjo jokes – what’s the difference between a banjo player and a large pizza?
A large pizza can feed a family of four.
on December 13th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Yay, another person who has allowed a banjo to enter her house! Thanks for your kind words. One more joke:
What’s the difference between a banjo and an onion?
No one cries when you chop up a banjo.
on May 10th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I presently have Keynote ‘09 and I can’t seem to find a way to export to Flash. Your website was the inspiration for pursuing my project in this way. I hope you can help me find a method for solving this conundrum.
on May 11th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Ryan, when I wrote this post in October 2007, Keynote exported to Flash from the File menu. I’ve learned from reports in the last week that Apple has removed this feature from Keynote 09. I was lazy about upgrading so never ran into this problem myself.
On discussion boards, I’ve seen suggestions that users could save Keynote presentations as QuickTime, then convert that to Flash, but then you apparently lose any interactivity.
Unfortunately, my only suggestion is to buy a copy of an earlier version of iWork (the package that contains Keynote), such as iWork 08. Prices on eBay seem to be $20-55.
This is the second time that I’ve gotten irked with Apple for removing features and dumbing down software during an “upgrade” (iMovie is another). This is a disturbing trend but opens up the market for competitors who understand business needs better.
on June 30th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Thanks for the reply Cathy. Sorry, it’s taken a while to get back here. I just wanted to say I appreciate your help. I still ended up creating a presentation in Keynote and I’m going to try to track down a version of Keynote ‘08. However, because I couldn’t export the presentation to Flash I ended up going another route and using a web-builder (squarespace.com) for my site.
It’s up and running now, I’m hoping to at least get some use out of my other presentation when I interview in person.
I’ll let you know if I have any luck with backwards compatibility. (Although I’m pretty sure magic move wasn’t part of ‘08)