Review: Prezi makes it easy to create cinematic presentations with zoom and pan effects

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Prezi Prezi is fun to use, and the presentations you can make with it are fun to watch.

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Traditional slide-based presentations are just that: Traditional. You could have fantastic visuals, but no matter how fancy (or austerely minimalistic) each slide is, it remains a slide. Prezi (various prices, starting at free) tries to change this by turning your presentation into a wide-open canvas on which you can draw your ideas spatially, and then presenting them by zooming and panning all over the canvas. Used well, the end result feels cinematic and engaging in a way traditional presentations rarely are.

Prezi offers over 50 templates to get you started.

To get you started, Prezi shows a list of templates you could use. There are an ample number of templates, but there is no way to preview what a template looks like except by starting a project with it. If you start a project with a template and find out it doesn't work for you after all, you can switch over to a different template midway through, but you will have to adjust things to work in the new template.

Prezi uses a canvas, but makes it easy to see how a presentation flows.

Prezi's canvas-based nature means that you create the presentation where you'll be showing it. If you want to zoom and pan somewhere when presenting, you'll have to zoom and pan while editing, so you instantly get a feel for what your audience will see. Instead of "slides," Prezi uses "path points": saved states for your presentation, where the viewport shows a portion of the canvas.

It is easy to insert images using a built-in Google Images search, or from your local computer.

As you present, you move through a progression of these path points, with Prezi automatically animating things as needed. If a given path point covers a small area of the canvas, Prezi will smoothly zoom into it, revealing new details as needed. If the next path point is all the way across the canvas, Prezi will smoothly pan there.

Prezi offers built-in diagrams.

I found Prezi easy and intuitive to work with, without much of a learning curve. When I had to insert an image, it let me search Google Images right from within Prezi, and I could tell it to only look for images that are okay to use commercially. You can also embed YouTube videos, as well as content from your local computer. A recent Prezi feature is the addition of sound: You can now upload sound clips to go along with your presentation, or even narrate the entire presentation so that it can stand on its own.

Instead of slides, your presentation flows along path points, which you can change and edit as needed.

Internet connections have a tendency to flake out at just the wrong moment, especially in a busy convention center. To avoid potentially embarrassing situations, Prezi lets you download your presentation for offline viewing. The presentation is packaged as a Zip archive, with a small executable player.

Prezi lets you present to others online.

Prezi is available in three different plans, starting with a free Public plan. I tested the $4.92/month Enjoy plan. The $13.25/month Pro plan is the only one that lets you work offline.

A big part of Prezi's appeal is that it's still unusual. It is likely your audience is used to slide-based presentations, so Prezi's cinematic nature would wow them. In time, if Prezi or similar products become commonplace, it may lose its visual edge. Until that happens, Prezi is an almost surefire way to create an engaging, surprising, and beautiful presentation.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

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Review: Easily edit images and create collages using Fotor in Windows 8's Modern interface

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Fotor Fotor is no Photoshop, but it's simple, fun, and works well for basic image editing.

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If Picasa has taught us anything, it's that not every image editor has to be Photoshop. Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. If that sounds like fun and you happen to be rocking a Windows 8 device, you should check out Fotor, a free photo editor that uses the Modern interface. It's fast, visual, and has virtually no learning curve.

Fotor makes it easy to add text overlays to images, but you can control the font size independently.

When you launch Fotor, it lets you open an existing photo to edit, or start working on a collage. It also comes with six sample photos arranged in an attractive grid, to get you started. The simplest way to get a feel for what Fotor is like is to click a sample photo. Do that, and you'll find yourself in the editing interface.

In editing mode, the image dominates most of the screen, and an editing toolbar lines the right side of the screen—opposite where you'd normally expect it, but in keeping with the Modern interface convention. The toolbar is subdivided into eight sections, six of which contain editing tools: Basic editing (color corrections), cropping, effects, borders, focus effects, and text tools. The other two sections let you open new files for editing, and save your work.

Fotor offers numerous effects, including crowd-pleasing Lomo looks

The color correction interface uses sliders, with live image updates: Just move the slider and see the change instantly. Cropping is similarly intuitive, with 11 preset aspect ratios, and a free-crop mode (to set your own aspect ratio). Just drag a frame across the image to set out your crop area, and click Confirm when you're happy with the composition.

Fotor's selective focus tool is the most nuanced one in the app, allowing for fine adjustments.

Image effects are divided into five categories, ranging from Classic to "Dark Corners" (i.e., vignette effects). While each category contains many different effects, individual effects cannot be adjusted in any way. Many of the image modifications are heavy-handed, and Fotor offers no way to tone down the amount of influence a given effect has. Also, you can't layer effects one on top of the other. You need to pick one effect for your image and stick with it. The Borders category is similar: There's a rich selection of borders, but you can't tweak anything, like the size of the margin or the color of a given border.

Fotor's collage mode makes it easy to pick a number of images for your collage.

One category that does offer fine-grained adjustments is the Tilt-Shift Mode, whereby you can apply selective focus effects to your image. Tilt-shift (a "miniature look") isn't the only option: You can also apply a center focus effect, where the subject appears sharp and surrounding detail is blurred out. Both center focus and tilt-shift effects offer many adjustments: You can change the tilt shift's angle, and change either mode's blur radius and virtual aperture size. Of all the tools Fotor offers, selective focus is the most nuanced.

Finally, you can also overlay your image with some text. The text tool offers a limited number of fonts (you can't pick from any font installed on your computer), and lets you pick one of several overlay templates, such as speech or thought bubbles. There is no way to control the font size independently of the template: You can only resize the text along with the speech bubble it's in.

In collage mode, it's easy to move images around, resize the different parts of the collage, or pick one several premade layouts.

All in all, Fotor does what it does quite well. It excels in being quick, and quick to master. Few features are cryptic, and none appear to rely on hidden toolbars you need to slide into view. If you want to edit images in the Modern user interface, Fotor is a great option.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the software to your system.

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Review: MindMup is a free, effortless way to create mind maps in moments

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Mind maps are fundamentally very simple. You can create one on the back of a napkin in mere seconds, so it follows that there should be an equally effortless way to do it online. And there is: MindMup, a free and lightweight service lets you throw together simple mindmaps without having to download anything, open an account, or do anything else. It's Web-based, too, so it works across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

MindMup makes good use of the mind map format to explain how the product works.

When you go to MindMup.com, you first see a default map explaining how the service works. It goes over keyboard and mouse use, and includes notes on how open and frictionless the service is. And for once, it's no hyperbole: MindMup requires no registration to work, not even when you save your mind map. And if you're afraid of saving your work to the service, you can easily connect it with your Google Drive, or even save to the local browser storage using HTML5.

MindMup is JavaScript-based, so you don't need to have Flash installed to use it.The service works best for simple mind maps. You can nest nodes, change their color, expand or collapse them, and move them around using the mouse. Motion is accompanied by pleasingly smooth, bouncy animations. In keeping with MindMup's simplicity, you can't select multiple nodes at the same time, nor can you add metadata to a node (such as a link, an extended note, or an importance level).

MindMup lets you export your work as a PNG image, as well as in several other formats.

MindMup supports undo and redo operations, but doesn't have a fancy timeline interface like the one MindMeisteruses. Its interface consists of a top menu bar and a floating toolbar, both of which can be collapsed. In its barest form, only the mind map is visible. To access the menu once you've collapsed it, simply hover your mouse at the top of the screen, and the menu will become visible.

Once the time comes to share your work, you can export it to .png or FreeMind .mm formats, or you can simply share the link to MindMup. Anyone clicking on the link will see your mind maps and be able to make changes, but the changes will be saved in another copy. They can share that new copy with you, of course, but that's no substitute for real-time collaboration.

MindMup lets you zoom the mind map so that it's big enough to project and present.

MindMup is super-simple, lightweight, and generally a joy to use. The next time I need to jot down a quick mind map to explain a concept or make sure I cover all bases at a meeting, I may well use it.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

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Create your online brand with a combination of SharePoint-2013 and the Web technologies you already know

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This post is an introduction to how you can easily use the Design Manager alongside the web design tool you're most comfortable with to define your company's online brand using the strong content management capabilities system that is SharePoint 2013.

With SharePoint 2013, you can brand your SharePoint publishing site using the web technologies you know, the tools you like, and the devices you want, making it easier than ever before to get started as a SharePoint designer or developer. And for current SharePoint pros, don't worry. The work you've put in learning SharePoint thus far is still very applicable and your knowledge of the SharePoint publishing page model is still incredibly useful.

This post provides on overview of how you can easily use the SharePoint 2013 Design Manager and device channels alongside the web design tool you're most comfortable with to define your company's brand online. While keeping the same page rendering infrastructure, we've made three major enhancements to how you brand a SharePoint publishing site.

SharePoint still maintains its master pages and page layouts in ASP.NET but now you can also design your master pages and page layouts in HTML, including using HTML markup of SharePoint controls. In the background, SharePoint creates the corresponding ASP.NET file that it wants but that you get to ignore.

In the past, you could use CSS and JavaScript to style your site, but now those are fully integrated into your SharePoint web development experience. We did a lot of work with HTML previewing so you can style the HTML directly rather than having to use the server to see it and if you do preview on the server, you can do so in the context of any SharePoint page of your choice!

Working in the web technologies you know doesn't stop at the page layout level. The content query Web to design in XSLT is still part that required you around, but the new content search Web part is an important building block for creating search-driven experiences in SharePoint of 2013?? making sure that there was a great designer experience to go along with it was very important for US, so it is customizable with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Because we aren't assuming any SharePoint knowledge on your part, we have the Design Manager to help walk you through the of your publishing site branding. This design Manager provides a wizard-like experience to give you SharePoint development guidance side-by-side with entry points for you to view and work with your design files. Each of the steps also has its own documentation article on MSDN:

Customizing the design of your site is more than converting HTML into ASP.NET. To help you be successful in creating your site, popular placeholders are ready and waiting for your content. When it comes to page layout, we inserted all the page fields that are unique to the content type you choose-- this way, creating your SharePoint design files turns into a matter of editing and tweaking rather than creating.

With the snippet Gallery, you have a good starting point for adding SharePoint functionality to your site. For those of you familiar with previous versions of SharePoint, think of this as the set of controls that you'd access from SharePoint Designer-but a bit more than that. The snippet Gallery provides HTML version (including, in many cases, a static preview to show you what you're working with while you edit your file in something like Dreamweaver split view) components-of a set of common - including all Web part from the Web Part gallery. For each LCC, you get to tweak its properties and simply copy it into your HTML master page or page layout, and in the background, SharePoint turns it into the ASP.NET control it requires.

Figure 1. At the top of the page of the snippet Gallery is a ribbon of all the snippets. The body of the page has the snippet's description, properties and HTML code, plus a live preview. Every master page has the same snippet gallery, which is slightly different from that of page layout- and the snippet gallery of a page layout content type depends on its (because the page fields change).

People are no longer simply accessing your site with their mouse on their desktop or laptop. It is a multi-device world out there: tablets, phones, and surfaces, oh my! How do you create an experience for your users so that their screen size is best utilized? Optimized for touch-based devices? SharePoint 2013, device channels help you present your site in the way best suited to whatever device a visitor is browsing from. As the designer, you get to think about what the experience of your site should be on all different form factors, differentiated by user agent substring assigned to up to 10 different channels.

Each channel can target multiple devices. For example, you can have one channel for both Windows phones and iPhones because they are of similar screen size, and a separate channel for the iPad. You can use a different master page and CSS per channel, and you can also target content to particular channels, all while having the exact same URL (which is great for usability and search engine optimization).

By using the device channel infrastructure, you get the opportunity to use device channel Panel, which is a great asset for content targeting. Content that you put inside one of these panels is rendered only on the channels you specify based on server-side logic, which decreases the page load time and the number of bytes sent over the wire. Combining these panels with a responsive CSS design makes for a faster and more streamlined user experience. Rather than having different channels based on screen size as in the previous example, you could have an "iOS" substring-based channel that captures iPads, iPhones and iPad minis and sends a single master page that loads different CSS based on what screen resolution the device is. For example, if you were the Windows phone team, you could target iOS devices and create a panel to advertise Windows phone.

Figure 2 and Figure 3. Side-by-side design mockups of the browser and mobile experiences for a news site based on the cross-site collection publishing feature, using responsive CSS, device channel panels, and a display template that changes the appearance of content search Web part results based on device channels.

This post which at introduction to how you can easily define your company's online brand using the tools you're most comfortable with and SharePoint 2013's strong content-management system. To learn more, go check out all the content our documentation writers have written for you on MSDN. The articles build sites for SharePoint 2013, Overview of Design Manager in SharePoint 2013, and develop the site design in SharePoint 2013 are some great starting places. Happy designing!

-Alyssa Levitz, SharePoint Program Manager

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Webinar: Create business cards quickly in Word & Publisher

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Need business cards right this minute? Whether you're forming a new start-up business or just need something in a pinch, Office has built-in business card templates to help. In this week's webinar, we'll show you how to create a business card in Word and Publisher at a moment's notice.

Can't see this video? It's also available at Microsoft Showcase. There is also a 30-second trailer.

What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar: 

Tips for making an effective business card Find the right template Design tips Smackdown: Publisher vs. Word (Bet on Publisher!)

References for this webinar:

Go to http://aka.ms/offweb for more information on how to join the series.

--Doug Thomas

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Need to combine two chart types? Create a combo chart and add a second axis

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This post is brought to you by Robin Wakefield, a Program Manager in the Excel Team.

Have you ever had two different types of data that you wanted to show in one chart?  For example you may want to plot actual revenue with forecasted revenue to compare the two values.

In an earlier post, we showed you how to create combination charts in Excel 2010, but we have revamped this experience as a part of Excel 2013 to make it much easier to create combo charts. I am going to walk through the same scenario used in that article so you can see the differences.

Suppose I work at a manufacturing company, and I'd like to analyze the number of units we've sold over the last few months and the total revenue generated.   I'm hoping to identify trouble spots, such as high unit sales that result in low revenue, which may in turn indicate that the units are being sold too cheaply.  I would like to create a single chart like the one below so I can see both data sets in one view.

To follow along, use this sample workbook.

1. Select the data you would like to use for your chart.

2. Go to the Insert tab and click Recommended Charts.

3. Click the All Charts tab and select the Combo category.

At the top of the dialog you will see a couple pre-canned combo charts to get you started and Clustered Column - Line is the default.  This combo chart will split the series 50/50 between a clustered column and a line chart. You can then use the table below the chart to change each series to a particular chart type and move series to the secondary axis.

Given that units sold and total transactions have different scales we need to move one of them to a secondary axis so we can clearly see the values for both.

4. Check the Secondary Axis box for the Total Transactions and click OK.

Your chart should now look like this:

As you can see it now takes four steps to create a simple combination chart instead of the eleven steps outlined in the earlier post!

Now we can walk through the finishing touches to make your combo chart look more professional. 

There are a couple steps in the previous post that are no longer necessary since they are the new defaults for 2013:

Legend is already on the bottom.Chart title is already added to the chart and all you need to do is edit the text.So the two steps left are to add axis titles and format the Total Transactions axis as $.

1. Click the Add Chart Elements button next to the chart.

2. Check Axis Titles.

3. Edit the axis title text

1. Right click on the secondary axis (Total Transactions) and choose Format Axis.

2. Expand the Number category.

3. Set the Category to Currency and the Decimal Places to zero.

And now your chart is completed.   

I think you will find that creating combo charts and modifying them to get to your final polished output is much easier now. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

--Robin Wakefield,  Excel Program Manager

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Avoid repeated: create a Word macro

Repeated input of the same information in the document after document, always and always... There must be a quicker way, right? You can save Word macros time (and possibly some reason) by to automate repetitive tasks.

Suppose you are a real estate agent. Every time, when you sell a home, you need name and address of the customer, the documents added. Create a macro to automate addition of all contact information of the customer, where whatever you need.

Creating a macro is straightforward and does not require programming skills. You simply say Word when you start and stop recording a series of steps; Type, for example, from at the start a client name, when you are finished. Then Word will all these steps automatically when you click a button or enter a shortcut key, you the macro assigned to the.

Here is a step by step:

1. Go to the view click the macros tab drop - down-list and select record macro.

In the dialog box to record a macro , you're going to call and describe your macro, and then select whether you want to run it on a key or key combination.

2. In the macro name box  dialog box, type your macro a name that contains no spaces, e.g., AdamSmith instead of Adam Smith.

3. The ' Description ' field is for you. In the course of time, you can create dozens of macros and anger might remember what is what. Give a description of you, out helps.

4. In the box store macro in determine whether the macro is running in the current document or all documents. Select the option--to run in all documentsall documents-.

5. Choose, whether you use a link or button, the macro run, by clicking on the button or keyboard symbols. For this exercise, click.

After you click,you can word your button to place add light-the toolbar for quick accessyou can find.

1. In the field of Word options/Quick Access toolbar , click the name of the macro, and click Add to include it on the list of the other commands on the Quick Access toolbar.

 

To ensure that you can identify the button on the toolbar, select a button.

2. Click on the change, and then select a button from the dozens available.

Once you select your button and click on OK, starts the macro is running, that record your keystrokes until you stop recording. For example, I chose the button of a man, wearing a tie, you click on OK, and the macro started, lived in Lincoln, entered Nebraska recording a fictitious client named Adam Smith's address. As I finished typing, I clicked stop recording the macro - drop-down list.

Here is how you can do:

1. Inthe dialog box changebutton , select a button, and then click OK.

2. Click OK again in the Word Options and starts to macros.

3. Lead the actions that you want to include in your macro.

4. Once you have performed the actions, gomacro tab on the viewtab, and then click stop recording.

5. You now see that the macro button appears on the toolbar for quick access. Just click and the same actions that you recorded to happen again, where to put the cursor in a document. They see this button on the toolbar for quick access in all Word documents if you have chosen that they once displayed only in your old.

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Using personalisation to create unique digital experience

There’s a high correlation between great customer experience and three key elements of loyal behaviour: willingness to buy more, reluctance to switch, and likelihood to recommend. Given today’s consumers interact with brands across many different channels and devices, marketers are left with a number of challenges – which channels are most relevant to their brand, how do they manage multiple channels and how do they evaluate the success and business impact of their activities?

Check out our recent webinar with Forrester and Pippa Barron, Renault UK’s Online Development and Publishing Manager. Here they discuss best practices to increase engagement, relevancy and personalisation and put customers in the driving seat.

Read on to see how we’re working with Pippa and her team to create a unique experience for Renault’s customers:

Understand what your customers want: Customers increasingly expect to conduct all their vehicle research online, including pricing, product, colours, and options, before they even go into a dealership. We’ve worked with Renault to integrate engaging media across its site. Adobe Scene7 displays images, shows video, and provides other content that allows visitors to explore available models and vehicle features for a better digital experience.Use enhanced images: By providing 360-degree views of each vehicle the customer can even see inside the car before going to the dealer.Offer personalised options: Using the colour-rendering option Renault customers can see swatches of all available colours and zoom in to really get a feel of what their car will look like in the colour option that they’ve chosen. This level of personalisation lets customers get a good idea of what colour car they want before they ever step into a dealership.Provide engaging hot spot content: Renault used Scene 7 to implement engaging hot-spot content (both text and video) where specific features and functionality are described and demonstrated in detail. This enables Renault to showcase its products and to zoom in to give the customer a great experience about what the product is really like. Offer relevant product videos: Renault used Scene7 to add four to six product videos per car showing key features and functionalities in detail. These included test drives or TV commercials that highlight the performance attributes of different models, as well as some information about the car that might move the viewer closer to a purchase decision.Provide up-to-date brochures and product price guides: Renault maintains a vast library of e-brochures and price lists for all its models and these are updated weekly using our technology. It also has a wide selection of supporting brochures about paint trim selections, financing options, and features like satellite navigation to provide the most up-to-date content for its customers.Evolve to meet customer expectations: Renault’s looking to evolve in ways that meet customer expectations in terms of mobile and desktop functionality. It has a mobile-optimised site that is compatible with all smartphones, and it will soon offer the 360-degree spin and zooming functions as well as video.

For more information on how to personalise the brand experience, please click here.

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Getting started Tip # 2: a travelogue from key West in OneNote create

(This is the second in a series on getting started with OneNote.) Read Tip # 1 create and set up a notebook to learn.)

How many times can you to key West if you from the opposite corner - the Pacific Northwest? I went to key West to dry, to see totally different flora and fauna, and southern and Cuban cuisine.

So I created an ongoing travelogue in a OneNote notebook with photos, favorite restaurant info and my notes, I wanted to remind every last second. I will walk through how I it has made, so that you can add this type of content to your own OneNote notebook.

 The choice of a theme

OneNote has built-in themes or templates to the mood and the purpose of the project match. Florida's sky is beautifully blue, so I chose the clouds of blue template:

To add a template, click the arrow next to the new page, choose page templates, and scroll to find which you like.

Add photos

On my first day, I saw huge iguanas, wild orchids and countless sea view.  How could I take not dozens of photos?  I carved it down and choose the best to my notebook Add.

To add photos, click on Insert Image, then navigate to where you saved it on your computer, and select those Add.

Add captions and other text

Sometime after I return, I show you the photos and question me, where I spotted the iguana.

With OneNote, it is easy to create labels or add text anywhere on the page. Start simply and OneNote creates a "Container" for the words. You can drag & drop the container to any place on the page.

Add website screenshots

Key West is the "gourmet" sky. Its chefs serve all kinds of fish and seafood Cuban cuisine and BBQ in other dishes. To my best culinary experiences remind, I took screenshots of Web pages of the restaurants and threw them in OneNote.

OneNote has only the coolest tool for "access" and copying Web pages. (Explain, it is more difficult than doing it.) Simply follow these steps:

Open a Web pageIn OneNote, click Insert, click screen clipping in the foreground will automatically pop the site and appear that is dimmed the cursor in the area you want to crop cursor changes to a black cross which a cropping tool, and when you release the cursor, screen shot is automatically inserted into the notebook page, OneNote automatically adds the date and time of the screenshot, and a link to the Web page

Adding hyperlinks

There were so many attractions in key West, that I maybe a photo or link each add could not. Instead I have a list of links and small images.

To add a link, click Insert, then link, which link dialog box opens.  Add the name of the link, then copy the URL in the address bar .

 

Save your notebook

In OneNote, you have never over worry save your notebook. How to use content in it, OneNote stores automatically to the location where you created the the cloud, computer, and many tablets and phones can contain. We show you how to save your notebook at different locations in an upcoming tip.

Organize all the stuff

For my notebook key West you probably noticed that I created individual pages for my photos, favorite restaurants and other content. Read more information about the create and set up a notebook with sections and pages, Tip # 1 in our beginners series.

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Create professional diagrams quickly with the new Visio

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When we started our planning process for this version of Visio, we made it a central goal that it would be easier, faster and more pleasant to create beautiful, professional looking diagrams. To achieve that, we made a host of improvements to the application – far too many for us to cover here. So, for this post, I’ll aim to give you an overview of all the changes we made and cover a few of the most highly requested new features. Later posts will cover everything here in much more detail.

Making diagrams that can effectively communicate information is the heart and soul of Visio. Polished, professional looking diagrams grab attention, inspire more confidence, communicate more effectively and reflect well on the people who made them. It’s always been possible to make good looking diagrams in Visio. This version we not only wanted to make it possible to create amazing looking ones, we wanted to make it startlingly simple. In fact, I might go as far as to say we wanted to make it hard to create bad looking diagrams in Visio (yes, yes – I am sure you could still do it if you tried!)

The foundation for great looking diagrams in the new Visio is the integration of the same rendering engine that PowerPoint uses. So, all the cool effects and UIs you’re familiar with from PowerPoint are now in Visio too!

All that power is great, but it’s like having a jet fighter without a pilot. It’ll do amazing things, if only you could figure out which button to push! Fortunately, we weren’t just aiming for the fighter pilot demographic. To make it incredibly easy to use all that power to get the look you want, we dramatically overhauled our theming feature. You just need to pick from among over 25 brand new, amazing looking themes and Visio will go and update the formatting on all your shapes to match that style.

Here’s an image of the same diagram in three different themes. You can change between the following diagrams in a single click, easily moving from simple to vibrant to informal:

Of course, we’ve also made updates across huge swaths of our content to freshen up its look and to take advantage of all the power of our new effects and themes. I’ll call out a few of the templates we’ve updated down at the bottom of this post.

Using Visio has always been great. We love receiving feedback that starts with “I love this program” (and doesn’t follow that with ‘but’)! We wanted to keep pushing on making the program fantastic to use to ensure that people keep finding the experience of using Visio to be efficient, intuitive and even – perhaps – enjoyable!

To achieve this, we invested across the board in polishing the product. We streamlined the ribbon and made our contextual UIs much more complete and focused. More commands than ever are now available right at your fingertips, which helps keep you focused on building your diagram instead of searching through complex UI to find the command you want. Try collapsing your ribbon in the new version and see whether using the right click menus makes you more efficient!

Outside the command space, we fixed hundreds of little road bumps (bugs :) that folks told us about when using the product, and we built out several major features that customers have been craving for a while. We also dramatically simplified our application look, so that the diagrams you’re making will take center stage, instead of needing to compete with Visio’s UI. Lastly, we added a raft of smooth transitions, which make the program much easier to follow, as well as making it a lot more attractive to use.

All in all, we are tremendously excited about how great using the next version of Visio is and we’re thrilled that you all will finally get to give it a try.

Yeah – I’ve got examples. Now that you’ve got the summary, I’d like to dive into a few specifics here. We’ve got later blog posts planned that will cover theming, effects and the command improvements – so I’m going to hold off on them. However, I would like to talk a bit about some of the top requested customer features that we’ve built as well as walk through some examples of templates that we’ve updated.

Change shape is one of the most highly requested customer features we’ve ever had. It’s not hard to see why. How many times have you dropped a process shape and connected it up, realizing later it should have been a decision? Or, have you ever wanted to give your simple decision shape more impact by subbing in one of the cool Visio Workflow shapes?

Changing a shape is now as easy as clicking a button and picking the shape you want. You can change one shape at a time or change several multi-selected shapes at once. This makes it easy to rough in a diagram with temporary shapes and then change to better looking, more accurate, or more appropriate shapes when you are ready to finish the diagram. You don’t have to worry about losing connections, formatting or settings; Visio transfers all that over to the new shape automatically.

If you don’t see the shape you want in the Shapes pane, you can use Search to find it and the search results appear in the Change Shape choices. To make changing the shape even quicker, you can use Change Shape from our right-click menu (we call it The Floatee).

Another highly request feature has been the ability to quickly duplicate a page. Right-clicking on the page tab and selecting Duplicate now creates a new page with all of the shapes, formatting and properties of the original. You can use this to quickly create variations of a diagram or to use a particular page as a starting template for many others or to simply explore different layouts – all without risking the contents on your original page. Combining Duplicate Page with Change shape also allows you to quickly try out using different shapes as well.

It’s now much easier to find the shape you want. Search has been updated with new keywords to give better results and the results are organized more clearly and grouped by stencil. You’re shown up to the first four relevant shapes in each stencil and when you find the shape you want you can add it to your diagram or add in the whole stencil to the Shapes Pane with one click.

If you prefer to browse for shapes, we’ve also updated the More Shapes menu to make it easier to preview stencils and let you add or remove multiple stencils at once.

As I mentioned, we’ve also updated a huge portion of our content this release. There’ll be a whole article detailing what we’ve done later, so I just want to give you a taste here to illustrate a few of the changes that we’ve made.

Org Chart has been reworked with 10 completely new styles, each with its own unique look. We’ve made the use of pictures super easy as well. The net result is that in a few clicks you can make org charts with incredibly varied styles that range from minimal to professional to hip to playful – whichever is appropriate for the personality of your team or organization.

Containers were already a powerful tool for diagram creation and they’re even better now. Not only are there new containers for you to use, we’ve also added the ability to format containers with a variety of new looks. Whether you want something purely functional or more stylistic, it’s easy to customize a container. Once you’ve selected a container style you want, you can change the heading style and use themes or quick styles to make it look just like you want.

Like containers, new callouts give you options to give your diagrams a customized look. Callouts have been completely reworked to provide more choices and more formatting options. You can quickly integrate the look of your callouts to your diagram with Themes, or use Quick Styles to draw special attention to a specific callout.

New versions of these diagrams have updated shapes with a simple, modern look. In addition to making it easy to produce incredibly professional looking diagrams, these shapes are updated to include the newest hardware and concepts. We’ve also made the most important semantic details of the shapes more visually salient – making it easier to read large, complex diagrams.

There’s also a new version of the Workflow diagram that shares the modern look. Like the network shapes, you’ll find they can add flavor to other diagrams.

Don’t worry, though, the old 3D network and workflow shapes were so popular and iconic that we couldn’t take them out. So, you can still find them by searching or browsing through the template categories.

The Basic Diagram template is a great toolkit to start a generic diagram or to use in an existing one, and we’ve updated it to give you a wider variety of attractive and useful shapes. You’ll be able to use them to make quick drawings or add them to other diagrams to help illustrate your information. We’ve added lots of new shapes, including decorative shapes, arrow shapes, graph and math shapes.

And even with all that, we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg on what the new Visio can offer. Check out our upcoming blog posts for deep dives on everything I touched on above.

We hope that you’ll find it easier, faster and more pleasant to create beautiful, professional looking diagrams in Visio than it has ever been before!

We would love to see your comments on this and other blog posts and if there are other topics you’d like to see us cover, let us know.

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