# Slide Dog



## ruinexplorer (Apr 13, 2013)

Has anyone tried this software yet? Is it worthwhile?


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## SlideDogDev (Apr 15, 2013)

Hi,

I just discovered this very interesting forum. I'm one of the makers of SlideDog. You can ask me anything related to the software. Feedback is also much appreciated


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## cpf (Apr 15, 2013)

Never heard of it before. Downloaded to try, started playing a simple presentation, and now there's no playlist and the main window is stuck in some nether-region of my desktop and I can't get it up again. Oh well, restarted

There's no option to always hide the cursor? Or at least, on certain file types?

Tried using the website presenter thing. The app stalled "preloading content" and when I bailed out, I found a new Chrome window (with the content fully loaded) sitting on my desktop. Tried again, sort of worked, except the Chrome statusbar is stuck saying "Downloading proxy script." 

I don't understand the key shortcuts - I press PgUp inside a PDF and, predictably, I get the previous page, not the previous slide. Also, it says "All file types: Esc" but Esc doesn't work in web pages. Plus, at first I thought it was a 3-key combo to go backwards, not 3-chose-1. 

The pop-up/down toolbars are annoying - I don't want my slide deck showing up when I happen to mouse too close to the bottom of the screen. Yeah, I could pay $99 for the pro version which I would assume solves this problem, I could also just use PowerPoint and deal with alt-tabbing.

The interface seems sluggish and laggy, especially when it's transitioning between content, or loading stuff. The app takes a good 6-7s to start up on my machine (powerpoint takes <1).

So, all in all, good idea, but definitely needs some polish and testing. I don't like the idea that my presentation could get stranded offscreen, or that I could be panicing moments before I'm supposed to be on stage because the app froze loading a webpage, or that I get stuck on a slide with no controls, or any of the other issues here. Reliability and predictability are key.


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## SlideDogDev (Apr 16, 2013)

cpf said:


> Never heard of it before. Downloaded to try, started playing a simple presentation, and now there's no playlist and the main window is stuck in some nether-region of my desktop and I can't get it up again. Oh well, restarted



I'm not sure what happened here. Did the pre-loading of a specific set of files fail? I would love to hear what files you used when this error happened.


cpf said:


> There's no option to always hide the cursor? Or at least, on certain file types?



PowerPoint does this automatically when the user is idle (as in doesn't move the mouse) for a few seconds. We could implement the same behavior for all files. I will add this to our feature request list. 


cpf said:


> Tried using the website presenter thing. The app stalled "preloading content" and when I bailed out, I found a new Chrome window (with the content fully loaded) sitting on my desktop. Tried again, sort of worked, except the Chrome statusbar is stuck saying "Downloading proxy script."



We discovered this bug yesterday as well. It is now fixed and we will push a release update today.


cpf said:


> I don't understand the key shortcuts - I press PgUp inside a PDF and, predictably, I get the previous page, not the previous slide. Also, it says "All file types: Esc" but Esc doesn't work in web pages. Plus, at first I thought it was a 3-key combo to go backwards, not 3-chose-1.



Thanks, we will clear this up.


cpf said:


> The pop-up/down toolbars are annoying - I don't want my slide deck showing up when I happen to mouse too close to the bottom of the screen. Yeah, I could pay $99 for the pro version which I would assume solves this problem, I could also just use PowerPoint and deal with alt-tabbing.



The pop-up happens when you drag the mouse over the top or bottom two pixels wide overlays. If you are at the last slide/page of a file and click PgDn, you'll jump to the next file in the playlist without seeing the menubars. We are considering adding a keyboard shortcut for jump to prev/next file as well.


cpf said:


> The interface seems sluggish and laggy, especially when it's transitioning between content, or loading stuff. The app takes a good 6-7s to start up on my machine (powerpoint takes <1).



The interface should not be sluggish when transitioning between content unless you run Windows XP or have AERO disabled (how to enable: How to Turn on Aero in Windows Vista: 7 Steps - wikiHow). Also if you run a low-end machine or run in power-saver mode, things might be slower than usual. The app takes that long to start because it checks if all necessary 3rd-party applications (like office PowerPoint) is installed. I guess we could add an option in the preferences menu to turn this check of at every startup, but I believe it would be a trade-off between user experience and the safety of knowing that all pre conditions are met.


cpf said:


> So, all in all, good idea, but definitely needs some polish and testing. I don't like the idea that my presentation could get stranded offscreen, or that I could be panicing moments before I'm supposed to be on stage because the app froze loading a webpage, or that I get stuck on a slide with no controls, or any of the other issues here. Reliability and predictability are key.



You are absolutely right. And as always, one should test before running something live no matter what software one uses. 

Thanks a lot for your feedback


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## SlideDogDev (Mar 11, 2014)

Hey, guys. 
Hope it's okay that I bump this thread. I thought about creating a new one, but figured it would be fair to continue this instead.

I just wanted to let you know that we've done a lot of work on SlideDog the past year. The issues mentioned in previous posts are taken care of an we've added especially one feature that I think would benefit AV tech professionals - the ability to remote control SlideDog from any device with a browser.

I hope some of you will check it out and give me your honest feedback. Thanks to the previous posts in this thread, we discovered several issues we had to improve - and there are probably still some more.

Looking forward to your feedback.


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## rgkgbg1000 (Aug 18, 2015)

New Slide Dog user. I like the interface of Slide Dog. A friend recommended it. My problem is I've tried to load it on two Windows 8.1, 64 bit computers and it will not accept video files and PowerPoint files. It tells me to load PowerPoint viewer and VLC and after doing so still says I don't have the s/w loaded. Then it freezes. 
What's the solution?

Raj


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