visual studio presentation mode

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Posted on May 10, 2023

How to Use Visual Studio Like a Pro When Presenting Your Code

Visual Studio is great to write code and create something amazing, but sometimes, you may want to use it for a different purpose: presenting your code to an audience. Whether you are giving a demo, a workshop, a lecture, or a webinar, you want to make sure that your audience can see and understand your code clearly. That's where Presentation Mode comes in.

Presentation Mode is a feature that lets you open an instance of Visual Studio that looks like a fresh install, without any customizations, extensions, or settings synchronization. This way, you can avoid any distractions or confusion that may arise from your personal preferences or environment. You can then adjust any settings that are relevant for your presentation, such as font sizes, themes, window layouts, and keyboard shortcuts. These settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode.

How to Enter Presentation Mode

There are two ways of entering Presentation Mode in Visual Studio: with an extension or from command prompt without extensions.

With the extension

The easy way is to install the Tweaks extension and open any solution, project, or file in Visual Studio. Now you can right-click the Visual Studio icon in the Windows task bar and select Presentation Mode .

This will launch a new instance of Visual Studio with the default settings and no extensions (other than machine-wide ones). You can then open your solution or project and start presenting.

From Command Prompt

You can do the same thing yourself if you don't want to install the extension. Open the Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell and execute the following line:

This will launch a new instance of Visual Studio with the root suffix PresentationMode. You can swap the word PresentationMode with whatever other word you want to create yet another isolated instance type. This can be helpful for scenarios where you need different settings based on the kind of project you are working on. For instance, you might prefer specific extensions and window layouts only for web development. This allows you to have that versatility.

How to Customize Presentation Mode

Once you have entered Presentation Mode, you can customize any settings to configure Visual Studio for your presentation style. Here are some common settings that you may want to change:

• Font sizes : You can change the font sizes for the Text Editor, Environment, Tooltips, Statement Completion, and more from Tools > Options > Environment > Fonts and Colors . A good rule of thumb is to use at least 18 points for the Text Editor and 12 points for the Environment.
• Theme : You can change the theme from Tools > Options > Environment > General . You may want to choose a theme that matches your presentation slides or has good contrast for your audience.
• Window layout : You can change the window layout from Window > Reset Window Layout . You may want to minimize or close any tool windows that are not relevant for your presentation, such as Solution Explorer, Output, Error List, etc. You can also use Window > Auto Hide All to hide all tool windows until you hover over them.
• Keyboard shortcuts : You can change the keyboard shortcuts from Tools > Options > Environment > Keyboard . You may want to use the default keyboard shortcuts or choose a scheme that matches your audience's expectations.

These settings will be saved for the next time you use Presentation Mode. If you want to reset them to the default values, you can use Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings ¹.

How to Exit Presentation Mode

To exit Presentation Mode, simply close the instance of Visual Studio that you used for presenting. This will not affect your normal instance of Visual Studio or any other instances with different root suffixes.

Presentation Mode is a handy feature that lets you use Visual Studio in a clean and distraction-free way for presenting your code to an audience. It allows you to customize any settings that are relevant for your presentation style, such as font sizes, theme, window layout, and keyboard shortcuts. These settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode. To enter Presentation Mode, you can either use the Tweaks extension or the Developer Command Prompt or PowerShell. To exit Presentation Mode, simply close the instance of Visual Studio that you used for presenting. I hope this article has helped you learn how to use Visual Studio in Presentation Mode and how to make your code presentations more effective and engaging.

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How to Give a Killer Presentation With VS-Code ?!?

Published on sun 17 april, 2022.

• Architecture
• Visual Studio Code

In this tutorial, you will learn how to optimally present code from within Visual Studio code. As a developer, being asked to present your code seems to be a very common ask in 2021. Doing code reviews over Zoom, talking about some code that you have written in a remote job interview, talking at a meet-up, or even making YouTube videos are all things I have done within the last week. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details 😈Being able to present code in a professional manner is an essential skill nowadays, so how exactly do you present code in a great way in Visual Studio code... read on to learn 🔥🔥🔥

Before getting into VS-Code, let us talk about a great free presenting tool for Windows called ZoomIt . ZoomIt will allow you to either zoom in on certain areas on your screen or annotate the screen while you are presenting. ZoomIt has been created by Microsoft for technical presentation, it's free, so there's no harm in trying it out!

After installing ZoomIt, you can use the shortcut key Ctrl and 1 to Zoom in on the screen where your mouse is currently located. The shortcut combo of Ctrl and 2 will annotate the screen. Within annotation mode, you can either annotate freehand, draw a box, circle or arrow 👉🏻👉🏼👉🏽👉🏾👉🏿

Better Live Coding

Coding on its own is hard enough, so is presenting. Trying to do both at the same time exponentially doubles up the chances of mistakes from occurring. Having to worry about live coding in your presentations, just adds a new source of stress. Typos, syntax issues, code that does not compile are the things that make people who present code wake up in the middle of the night with sweats. Instead of doing live coding in a talk, you can use a handy extension called HackerTyper . Hacker Typer allows you to record yourself programming ahead of time. Hacker Typer records all your keystrokes within VS-Code into a buffer. After recording and saving your keystrokes, you can then replay the same sequence again later. In your presentation, you can wildly mash any key on your keyboard and your code will appear on screen how you expect it to and in the right locations. Using Hacker Typer makes it look like you are live coding, however, it allows you to concentrate on making your talk points rather than the code. Making a recording using Hacker Typer is simple :

• Open a file or a new VSCode window
• Open the command palette, Ctrl + Shift , type PHackerTyper: Record Macro
• Open a new file and start typing some code
• Every keystroke you make will be recorded into an in-memory buffer
• When you have finished open the command palette again type execute HackerTyper: Save Macro

After recording your macro, when you are ready to give your presentation, follow these steps:

• Open a new file
• Open the command palette, type in Execute HackerTyper: Play Macro
• Select the name you selected
• Now type anything on your keyboard and the code you recorded earlier will start typing 💥

VS-Code Themes

When doing a presentation, the general rule of thumb is that a darker theme looks best on electronic displays, e.g. computer screens, and a lighter theme looks better on projectors. To make your code easy to read for your audience, it is recommended to use a light theme. If you need inspiration about which light theme to use in VS-Code for presentations, I recommend the Github theme . Downloaded over 2 million times, this is an extremely popular light theme to use that looks good and will make your code pop 😍

Presentation Mode

When presenting code, you do not want your audience to become distracted by unneeded visual noise. You do not need solution explorer, the terminal, the sidebar, or any annoying notifications distracting your presentation. To ensure a smooth, distraction-free presentation, you could present your code using the in-built Zen mode to remove these distractions. To start zen mode, open the command palette ( Ctrl + Shift + P ) and search for 'zen'. Zen mode is OK, however, you can go one step further with an extension, [Presentation Mode](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jspolancor.presentationmode). The Presentation Mode extension will render code within VS-Code in a nice distraction-free view. After installing the extension, to start presentation mode, open the command palette ( Ctrl + Shift + P ) and search for 'presentation mode' option.

You now know about all the tools required to make a really cool and smooth presentation in VS-Code. Use these tools and remember practice makes perfect. Armed with this new knowledge, I'm sure you will nail your presentation 💅. Happy Coding 🤘

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Quickly switch to a “Presentation Mode” in Visual Studio

1 minute read

As I prepared to give a presentation tomorrow night, I stumbled upon a great article explaining how to setup Visual Studio for a “presentation mode.” Presentation Mode are the font sizes required so the folks sitting in the back row don’t repeatedly say “can you zoom in a little?”

I’ve written about presentations before, but failed to go into any detail about configuring your IDE of choice. Mine for tomorrow will be Visual Studio. Since it’s been a while since I’ve presented, I didn’t quite remember the required settings to change the fonts. And Visual Studio has a lot of settings:

Thankfully, I found the article I mentioned above, and saved myself a small fortune of time trying to find and toggle all the correct settings. I’ve perfected the following quick process for my presentations.

4 simple steps to a better presentation

Step 1: Download this Visual Studio settings files

Step 2: Import into Visual Studio via the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu item

• Select “Import selected environment settings” and click “Next”
• Select “Yes, save my current settings”. Do this so you can revert back after your presentation. Type in a name, I called mine “dev.vssettings”, and pick a folder to store them in. Click “Next”
• Click “Browse…” and find presentationmode.vssettings. Click “Next”
• Leave all the defaults, and click “Finish”

Step 3: Give your presentation with fonts the back row can read

Step 4: Revert back to your original settings by repeating Step 2 and choosing your saved settings (you did save them, right?!)

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• .NET Power Tips
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.NET Power Tip 6: Presenting in Visual Studio (Presentation Mode & ToolBox Snippets)

This blog post covers a few tips for holding presentations that include some activity in  Visual Studio, such as live coding. It explains how to switch VS into presentation mode with a single command and how to store your code snippets in the toolbox. In about 80% of the presentations that I have witnessed so far, as soon as the presenter switched to Visual Studio it became very hard to follow because the font size of the text and menus was far too small. Remember that even if you, as a presenter can read it without any problem, the people in the back seats who might as well suffer from less clear eyesight, will not be able to read it and therefore not follow your explorations.

What can you do about that?

MAKE IT BIGGER!

The following section shows a couple of possibilities how to tackle the problem.

Use PresentON / PresentOFF from the Visual Studio PowerTools

First, go to TOOLS –> EXTENSIONS AND UPDATES and install the Productivity Power Tools for your edition of Visual Studio.

You can then navigate to the Quick Launch Window (Ctrl-Q) in the top right corner and use the PresentON and PresentOFF   Commands to make EVERYTHING bigger. That includes menus, tab headers, text editors, tool boxes, etc.

Using the PresentEdit   command you can even modify the presentation mode settings and adjust the font family and sizes to your needs. In the picture below I adjusted font size for menus to 14 and for text editors to 18.

Use Window Layouts   in Visual Studio 2015

VS2015 allows you to save a window layout via WINDOWS –> SAVE WINDOW LAYOUT .  You can prepare different window layouts to be used for working and for presenting. It is even possible to switch from one layout to another by using a keyboard shortcut.

Check out these links for more information on window layouts:

http://geekswithblogs.net/WinAZ/archive/2015/04/16/visual-studio-2015-custom-window-layouts.aspx

If you don’t have VS2015 yet, you can achieve the same features with a tool called Layout’O’Rama:

https://rvduren.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/multiple-window-layouts-in-visual-studio/

Use a Lower Resolution

Whenever I am presenting myself, I tend to use a very low resolution, even if the beamer supports the high resolutions that are common nowadays.  Switching to a low resolution leads to everything in Visual Studio being bigger. It can be hard to perform the demo due to the lack of space, but if you already prepare your demos on a low resolution setting, it works like a charm. Your audience will appreciate you working a bit harder for them to see what you are doing.

Use a Magnifier

Use a magnifier tool whenever you need to show something that you just couldn’t make bigger. Windows has a built-in magnifier, that you can open using and close using the [Win – +] and [Win – -] shortcuts. However, using a magnifier is no excuse to not make stuff as big as possible. Fiddling around too much in the magnifier can be very annoying.

When coding in the text editor, collapse all the tool windows and use ZOOM, (Ctrl-Mousewheel) to make the text BIG. When preparing your session, keep your lines shorter as usual!

Full Screen Mode

Switch to full screen mode (Shift-Alt-Enter on my machine, check you settings) or VIEW –> FULL SCREEN to avoid distraction by the tool windows.

Use the ToolBox for Code Snippets

Very often in a coding demo, you want to insert prepared snippets. I often see people switching to a text file in notepad and copy pasting stuff from notepad to visual studio. However, there are better solutions. Of course, you could use the code snippet functionality built into Visual Studio. But, I think I know a better alternative: Just use the toolbox. When preparing your demo, just mark a section of code and drag it onto the toolbox.

You can then rename it and give it a good name. By right clicking on the toolbox you can even create multiple tabs to structure your code snippets:

During the demo, you just open the toolbox, grab the snippets and insert it into the text editor, you don’t even have to change windows.

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Visual Studio Toolbox

Code Reviews and Presentations with Visual Studio

Whether you're giving a presentation at a conference or working with peers on a code review, these Visual Studio tools help make you look great.

• By Terrence Dorsey

Being able to present your code in a clear, readable manner is important for many reasons, all of which I recommend. You may be involved in team code reviews, making architecture or design recommendations to your team, or training new team members on the inner workings of your production systems. Maybe you want to share your enthusiasm and expertise by presenting at a conference or by teaching STEM classes to students or at a local tech meetup.

All of these are great things to do. In my experience, the key elements of giving any presentation are considering your topic and how best to share it with your audience, preparing concise, easy-to-read presentation materials, and a bit of practice to work out the kinks ahead of time.

In this first of two columns, I'm going to show you some tools and resources for preparing your presentation and sharing your code with a group, mostly with Visual Studio.

I'll finish up by briefly touching on some personal experiences giving presentations that went very well and one that went not well at all that I hope will help you do the best job possible.

Presenting with Code There are two basic technical aspects of presenting that, in my experience, define what tools you should use for presenting. The first is the audio/video system provided for your presentation space. The second is the software you use to prepare and present.

Generally, you have no control over the AV system, particularly if you're speaking at a school or conference. Even on home turf at your office, getting your laptop hooked up to the conference room display on the first try is never a sure thing.

With that in mind, my recommendation is to always use the most obvious, default software: PowerPoint, Visual Studio and your terminal of choice. If you're working on a Mac, I still recommend PowerPoint, but Keynote is great, too. I've seen a few people try using HTML-based presentations in a browser and it almost always ends up in an unexpected glitch. No matter how prepared you might be, or how well you know the material, technical glitches reflect poorly on the speaker.

Be safe and sane: Use the standard presentation tools. If there’s a glitch or you need to borrow a machine to present, there's no special setup required and always someone around who can help troubleshoot.

For some more detailed tips on presenting code, start out by reading Susan Ibach's " Visual Studio Time Saver -- Presenting Code in PowerPoint ," from Canadian Developer Connection. Ibach has some excellent quick tips, as well as video demonstrating them in action.

Cory House's " 6 Quick Tips for Presenting Code in Visual Studio " and Manuel Meyer's " .NET Power Tip 6: Presenting in Visual Studio (Presentation Mode & ToolBox Snippets) " both dig down into specific techniques for setting up Visual Studio for code presentations. These are really basic, useful tips that should be used by anyone presenting code in front of an audience.

For more general presentation strategy tips still focused on code discussion, definitely read Scott Hanselman's " 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical Presentation ." Hanselman knows a thing or two about code-centric presentations and his article covers everything from choosing your subject to displaying code and even how to advance your slides effectively -- really excellent information here.

And if you really, really must create your presentation using HTML5, take a look at Jacob Gable's " HTML5 Slideshow Presentation ." It's an ASP.NET MVC 3 Razor site template with a default HTML5 slideshow JavaScript library. The one nice thing I can say about these kinds of templates is that they translate into Web sites ... with a lot of additional work.

Presentation Tools for Visual Studio The articles linked earlier all touch on this, so it's worth digging down specifically into Visual Studio's Presentation Mode. Start by reading Brian Sherwin's " Presenter Tips #1: Visual Studio Built in Presenter Mode ," which gives a short-and-sweet tutorial on using this valuable tool.

Once you understand how Presentation Mode works, you might want to install Sam Harwell's Presentation Mode extension, which provides commands to increase or decrease the size of code text, tooltips and IntelliSense menus on the fly.

Presentation Zoom , by Chris Granger, lets you set a default zoom level that’s used for all editor windows in Visual Studio, so you don't have to set them individually.

Another interesting tool is Presentation Mouse Tracker . If the Korean-language translation is correct, the tool inserts a larger arrow to indicate what you're pointing at in Visual Studio.

I've found that the editor color scheme and code highlighting make a big difference when presenting. Black code on a white background ends up being hard to read on a big screen. I encourage you to experiment with other color schemes, but personally recommend Ethan Schoonover's Solarized theme. There are versions available for most code editors and even for some terminal emulators. For Visual Studio you can grab the Solarized-Dark Theme from Visual Studio Marketplace (although I find this one a bit too blue) or David Thibault's Visual Studio Color Schemes Based on Solarized .

Next week, we continue with tools for code review, and then what can be learned from my experiences with presentations.  

About the Author

Terrence Dorsey is a technical writer, editor and content strategist specializing in technology and software development. Over the last 25-plus years he has worked on developer-focused projects at ESPN, The Code Project, and Microsoft. Read his blog at http://terrencedorsey.com or follow @tpdorsey on Twitter.

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Visual Studio Settings for Presentations

3 minute read

There was a twitter conversation, started by @julielerman around building an extension would quickly disable the Quick Info feature for C# to make it easier for presenters/twitchers and others when recording demos or showing code.

Quick Info in @visualstudio is *slaying* me. Methods with really really long descriptions cover up code you try to read add to. I've found many complaints about it by googling but for C# , no way to disable it. Oddly, you can only disable it for C++. Help? — Julie Lerman ( @julielerman ) December 17, 2019

It quickly changed to building an extension to quickly switch between settings in Visual Studio.

👍 In general I'd love to see a "Presentation mode" that sets a set of settings like fontsize, disables quick info etc, and is quickly undone again once you're done presenting. — .Morten ( @dotMorten ) December 18, 2019

I chimed in a couple of times about how I accomplish this without a Visual Studio extension so I decided to blog about it. Luckily, the master of Visual Studio extensions, @mkristensen , and Program Manager for Visual Studio Extensibility, chimed in that he has a solution in mind to make it easier. In either case, let’s get to it.

Tools Needed

The list is simple Visual Studio (any edition) and something that syncs folders/drives (optional). I use OneDrive for synchronizing/backing up key files but you can use whatever is easier for you.

The Process

Step 1: save your ‘default’ settings.

Step 1a: Save your files to OneDrive

Again, you can save these to where ever you want, I chose OneDrive because a have a few different machines I use for presentations, both work and personal, but I like my settings to be the same. So save off your ‘ default ’ settings to a OneDrive folder. Mine are saved off to Presentations\Settings .

Step 2a: Create your Presentation settings

There are probably 3,000,000 opinions on what makes a good set of settings for presentations. There are a couple of things I change with mine, the Font, the Font Size, and the Current Line.

For the font, I was using Source Code Pro for a while. Lately, I have been switching between Monaco and Menlo. Pick whatever font you like. There is a pretty good blog post that author shows their Top 11 Programming Fonts for editing source code.

For the font size, I chose 16 , which is normally good for most screens.

I also change the Current Statement display item. I modify the item background to yellow so that it is easier to follow along.

While most of us only change the fonts, colors, etc for the Text Editor , depending on what you are showing, you might want to change others like Editor Tooltip , Immediate Window , Output Window , Data Tips , and more. Take a look at the Show setting for: drop down for more options. You can see the settings I use for presentations in this folder or directly ‘ presentations.vssettings ’

Step 2b: Save your Presentation settings

Now save your new presentation settings to the same folder as before. This is not required. It just makes it easier to find the settings later.

Now you have two different settings that you can load based on your needs at the time. To switch between them import the setting you want. Just be sure to chose No, just import new settings, overwriting my current settings when you do.

Hopefully Mads and team come up with a solution to make it a little bit easier to swap between settings for those of us that do it a little more often.

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6 Quick Tips for Presenting Code in Visual Studio

As a frequent conference presenter and attendee, I often see live code walk-throughs. There are a variety of tweaks you can make to optimize the Visual Studio experience for presenting code to others. It’s important to minimize visual distractions, size text properly, and practice your demo in a low resolution.

To that end, here’s 5 quick tips for presenting in Visual Studio.

1. Run Full Screen

Hit Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen mode. This hides the Windows taskbar, title bar, and many items in the Visual Studio UI such as Solution Explorer. This is especially helpful when presenting on low resolution projectors. As a side-note, this mode is also useful for daily use since it helps avoid distractions while coding by hiding all other OS elements.

2. Configure Full Screen Mode

Visual Studio full screen mode hides all explorer windows by default. You may decide to show certain items to assist with the demo. Simply re-enable displaying selected portions of the UI while in Full Screen mode and Visual Studio will keep track of your separate full screen settings. So once you select UI elements you’d like to display in this mode, it will remember from now on. Handy. (also, remember you can open files by hitting Ctrl+, and typing the name, so you likely don’t need to display the Solution Explorer).

3. Enable Presenter Mode

Presenter Mode is a simple feature in Productivity Power Tools . Once you’ve installed this extension, all you have to do is hit Ctrl+Q to place the cursor in the quick launch input, then type the word present. Select Present On/Present Off to toggle. You’ll find font sizes throughout the UI are increased.

4. Resize Further as Needed

In larger rooms with smaller projection screens, it may still be difficult for people in the back to read code, even with presenter mode enabled. In this case you can increase the font size of individual files by holding Ctrl and scrolling or via the zoom dropdown in the bottom left-hand corner of Visual Studio. When using the above techniques, this is rarely necessary, which is good because this setting doesn’t “stick” between files. If you need a more global solution, you can increase DPI scaling in Windows , though you may notice sizing quirks in any apps that haven’t been updated to support DPI scaling.

Zoom It is a free tool that allows you to zoom in and annotate specific portions of the screen. Simply hit Ctrl+1 to zoom in on a specific portion of the screen. This can help draw attention to an area and is also useful when a piece of UI outside of Visual Studio can’t be scaled by other means. I’ve even seen some presenters utilize Zoom It throughout an entire presentation, though I find this a bit disorienting.

6. Use the Light Theme

The standard light theme of dark text on a white background is typically easiest to read on projectors. The lower contrast alternatives look great on a nice LCD, but often lack sufficient contrast for projector use. (Credit to @craigber )

You can consider simply creating multiple Visual Studio settings files and switching between them as desired.

Have other tips for presenting code? Please chime in below.

4 replies on “6 Quick Tips for Presenting Code in Visual Studio”

Alt+Shift+Enter to toggle full screen mode AWESOME.

Thanks for the tip!

1. Put the fonts up to something reasonable to read at the back of the room (14pt? 16,18, 20pt?) 2. Before the presentation, check what it will look like from the back of the room. What will your attendees be seeing? 3. Create a whole new user on your OS (Windows/Mac) with everything configured for presenting. Notifications off. Fonts set, etc.

Layouts-O-Rama is a nice nuget package for creating/managing multiple layouts for Visual Studio. Might come in handy as well so I wanted to share it.

Good stuff! Thanks for the tip Rob!

Comments are closed.

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Good tips for a Technical presentation [closed]

I am planning to give a Technical presentation for a product we are building. Intended audience is Technical developers. So, most of the time, I will be debugging trough the code in Visual Studio, performance analysis, some architecture review etc.

I have read couple of blogs on font sizes to use, templates to use on Visual Studio, presentation tools , among other very useful tips .

What I am looking specifically for is how to keep the session interesting without making it a dry code walkthrough? How to avoid making people fall asleep? Would be great to hear some stories..

Update1 : Nice youtube clip on zoomit. Glue Audience To Your Presentation With Zoomit.

Update2 : New post from Scott Hanselman after his PDC talk - Tips for Preparing for a Technical Presentation

• visual-studio

15 Answers 15

Put interesting comments in the code.

// This better not fail during my next presentation, stupid @#$@#%$ code.

Don't talk about them, let them be found by the audience.

• awesome. i can already think of couple of them.. –  Gulzar Nazim Commented Sep 12, 2008 at 19:24
• humourous pictures (not clipart or dilbert, use photos or XKCD) are always a winner! –  metao Commented Jun 23, 2009 at 2:42

FYI, that Hanselman article has an update (your link is from 2003).

Use stories. Even with code examples, have a backstory: here's why someone is doing this. To increase audience participation, ask for examples of X where X is something you know you can demo, then phrase the walk-through in those terms.

Or maybe you have war stories about how it was different or how it normally takes longer or whatever. I find people identify with such things, then as you give your examples they're mentally tracking it back to their own experience.

I recommend Scott Hanselman's post (previously mentioned). I've written up a post with some tips, mostly for selfish reasons - I review it every time before I give a technical presentation:

Tips for a Technical Presentation

If you're using a console prompt, make sure the font is readable and that your paths are preset when possible .

Take 15 minutes to install and learn to use ZoomIt , so your audience can clearly see what you're showing off. If you have to ask if they can see something, you've already failed.

Probably most important is to have separate Visual Studio settings pre-configured with big, readable fonts .

• This is a great honor..I am one of your regular readers. Actually, I had the link to your blog entry but removed it to avoid too many links on the question. –  Gulzar Nazim Commented Sep 12, 2008 at 19:57

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got for doing demos is to just plain record them in advance and play back the video, narrating live. Then the unexpected stuff happens in private and you get as many stabs at it as you need.

You still usually need some environment to use as a reference for questions, but for the presentation bit, recording it in advance (and rehearsing your narration over the video) pretty much guarantees you can be at the top of your game.

I also like to put small jokes into the slides and that recorded video that make it seem like the person who made the slides is commenting on the live proceedings or that someone else is actually running the slides. Often, I make absolutely no reference at all to the joke in the slide.

For instance, in my most recent demo presentation , I had a slide with the text "ASP.NET MVC" centered that I was talking over about how I was using the framework. In a smaller font, I had the text "Catchy name, huh?". When I did that demo live, that slide got a chuckle. It's not stand-up worthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we're often presenting some pretty dry stuff and every little bit helps.

Similarly, I've included slides that are just plain snarky comments from the offscreen guy about what I'm planning to say. So, I'll say, "The codebase for this project needed a little help", while the slide behind me said "It was a pile of spaghetti with 3 meatballs, actually" and a plate of spaghetti as the slide background. Again, with no comment from me and just moving on to the next slide as though I didn't even see it actually made it funnier.

That can also be a help if you don't have the best comedic timing by taking the pressure off while still adding some levity.

Anyway, what it really comes down to is that I've been doing most of my demo/presentation work just like I would if it was a screencast and then substituting the live version of me (pausing the video as appropriate if things go off the rails) for the audio when I give it in front of an audience.

Of course, you can then easily make the real presentation available afterward for those who want it.

For the slides, I generally go out of my way to not say the exact words on the screen more often than not.

If you are showing code that was prepared for you then make sure you can get it to work. I know this is an obvious one but I was just at a conference where 4 out of 5 speakers had code issues. Telling me it is 'cool' or even 'really cool' when it doesn't work is a tough sell.

• Agreed. It must work the first time, every time. –  TonyOssa Commented Sep 21, 2008 at 1:05

You should read Mark Jason Dominus excellent presentaton on public speaking: Conference Presentation Judo

The #1 rule for me is: Don't try to show too much.

It's easy to live with a chunk of code for a couple of weeks and think, "Damn, when I show 'em this they are gonna freak out!" Even during your private rehearsals you feel good about things. But once in front of an audience, the complexity of your code is multiplied by the square of the number of audience members. (It becomes exponentially harder to explain code for each audience member added!)

What seemed so simple and direct privately quickly turns into a giant bowl of spaghetti that under pressure even you don't understand. Don't try to show production code (well factored and well partitioned), make simple inline examples that convey your core message.

My rule #1 could be construed, by the cynical, as don't overestimate you audience. As an optimist, I see it as don't overestimate your ability to explain your code!

Since it sounds like you are doing a live presentation, where you will be working with real systems and not just charts (PPT, Impress, whatever) make sure it is all working just before you start. It never fails, if I don't try it just before I start talking, it doesn't work how I expected it to. Especially with demos. (I'm doing one on Tuesday so I can relate.)

The other thing that helps is simply to practice, practice, practice. Especially if you can do it in the exact environment you will be presenting in. That way you get a feel for where you need to be so as not to block the view for your listeners as well as any other technical gotchas there might be with regards to the room setup or systems.

This is something that was explained to me, and I think it is very useful. You may want to consider not going to slide heavy at the beginning. You want to show your listeners something (obviously probably not the code) up front that will keep them on the edge of their seats wanting to learn about how to do what you just showed them.

• agreed. need to start with a bang. i wonder what would that be.. –  Gulzar Nazim Commented Sep 12, 2008 at 19:26

I've recently started to use Mind Mapping tools for presentations and found that it goes over very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

Basically, I find people just zone out the second you start to go into details with a presentation. Conveying the information with a mind map (at least in my experience), provides a much easier way for the information to be conveyed and tied together.

The key is presenting the information in stages (ie, your high-level ideas first, then in more detail, one at a time). The mind-mapping tools basically let you expand your map, as the audience watches and your present more and more detailed information. Doing it this way lets your audience gradually absorb the data in smaller stages, which tends to aid retention.

Check out FreeMind for a free tool to play with. Mind Manager is a paid product, but is much more polished and fluent.

Keep your "visual representation" simple and standard.

If you're on Vista hide your desktop icons and use one of the default wallpapers. Keep your Visual Studio settings (especially toolbars) as standard and "out of the box" as possible. The more customizations you show in your environment the more likely people are going to focus on those rather than your content.

Keep the content on your slides as consisce as possible. Remember, you're speaking to (and in the best scenario, with) your audience so the slides should serve as discussion points. If you want to include more details, put them in the slide notes. This is especially good if you make the slide decks available afterwards.

If someone asks you a question and you don't know the answer, don't be afraid to say you don't know. It's always better than trying to guess at what you think the answer should be.

Also, if you are using Vista be sure to put it in "presentation mode". PowerPoint also has a similar mode, so be sure to use it as well - you have the slide show on one monitor (the projector) and a smaller view of the slide, plus notes and a timer on your laptop monitor.

Have you heard of Pecha-Kucha?

The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up

Now, i am not sure if that short duration could be ok for a product demonstration. But you can try to get some nice ideas from the concept, such as to be concise and keep to the point, effective time, space management etc..

Besides some software like Mind Manager to show your architecture, you make find a screen recorder as a presentation tool to illustrate your technical task. DemoCreator would be something nice to make video of your onscreen activity. And you can add more callout to make the process easier to understand.

If you use slides at all, follow Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule :

• No more than 10 slides
• No more than 20 minutes spent on slides
• No less than 30 point type on slides
• "most of the time, I will be debugging trough the code in Visual Studio" Doesn't really lend itself to slides. –  swilliams Commented Sep 12, 2008 at 21:11

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged visual-studio or ask your own question .

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Present a detailed diagram to an audience

If you have a large, detailed diagram that you want to show to an audience, Visio helps you do that with features that emphasize details in an easily readable size:

You can zoom in or out of a drawing

You can pan from one area to another quickly and smoothly

Visio lets you pan and zoom with either keyboard shortcuts or friendly on-screen tools. Watch this 80-second demonstration:

Try It       With your diagram open in Visio, select View > Task Panes > Pan & Zoom to get started.

Tip:  To make more room for your drawing on the screen while presenting, press Ctrl+F1 to collapse the toolbar ribbon.

Another option: Present a series of pages as a "slide show"

You can browse the pages of your diagram one at a time, much like a slide show.

A right-click menu also allows you to easily jump to a specific page.

Presentation Mode has very limited zoom-in capabilities, so it's only suitable if your audience can see the drawing's details at the size presented. 

Try It       With your diagram open in Visio, select F5 to switch to presentation mode. Press the Right Arrow or Left Arrow key to move forward or backward through the pages of the drawing.

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A presentation mode for Visual Studio

tunnelvisionlabs/PresentationMode

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Use Visual Studio in Presentation Mode

Mads Kristensen

August 10th, 2020 4 0

Have you ever seen a presentation using Visual Studio, but had a hard time seeing the too-small fonts in the editor, Solution Explorer and menu system? How about all the custom extensions and themes the presenter used, making it harder to figure out what exactly was going on? Perhaps you were the presenter? Here’s how Visual Studio Presentation Mode can help.

When doing any type of presentation or demo, it’s is crucial the audience fully understand what you’re presenting. If there are barriers to make that harder, then your presentation is not going to be as effective as it otherwise could have been. Customizations that differs from the default Visual Studio behaviors that your audience are already familiar with often cause confusion too.

Here are some typical barriers:

• Code is too small
• Text in tool windows and menus is too small
• Custom toolbar button layouts
• Extensions that change the behavior of Visual Studio
• Custom color themes

So, to remove as many barriers as possible, we need a fresh install of Visual Studio without any customizations. Yikes!

Or we can use Presentation Mode to open an instance of Visual Studio that looks exactly like a fresh install. Here’s what you get with a Presentation Mode instance:

• Default settings, window layout, theme, and keyboard shortcuts
• No extensions (other than machine-wide ones)
• No settings synchronization with the normal Visual Studio instance

You can then customize any settings to configure Visual Studio for your demo or workspace. For example, change the font sizes to 18 for the Text Editor and 12 for the Environment or whatever value makes you happy. When you close Visual Studio these settings will be preserved for the next time you use Presentation Mode.

There are two ways of entering Presentation Mode:

The easy way

Install the Tweaks extension and open any solution, project, or file in Visual Studio. That ensures that the extension fully initializes. Now you can right-click the Visual Studio icon in the Windows task bar to open in Presentation Mode.

This makes it super easy to start a new Presentation Mode instance of Visual Studio.

Watch demo of Presentation Mode

The also somewhat pretty easy way

This is how the Tweaks extension mentioned above does it under the hood. You can do the same thing yourself if you don’t want to install the extension.

Open the Developer Command Prompt or Developer PowerShell and execute the following line:

devenv /RootSuffix Demo

You can swap the word Demo with whatever other word you want to create yet another isolated instance type. That might be useful for situations where you want different customizations depending on what type of project you’re working on.

For instance, you may want certain extensions and window layouts only when doing web development. This gives you that flexibility.

Watch demo of customized instances

Having the ability to isolate Visual Studio for various development scenarios and demo purposes is quite powerful. They are also easy to create and well supported – even in older version of Visual Studio. I’m curious to hear how this works for you, so let me know in the comments below.

Mads Kristensen Principal Product Manager, Visual Studio

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I probably wouldn’t go through all of this. Just reduce your screen resolution to 720p (or a high DPI variant of it) and you’re good. Everything will scale accordingly, including the apps you might want to run (not only show their code inside VS), mouse cursor, etc.

As a teacher this is a great benefit, especially when teaching remotely, because I have my normal dev environment and the environment that matches the students (and is customized via a shared settings file) so we can communicate at the same level about the IDE. However I use separate instances altogether. This is the only way to get true separation of VS stuff. But there are still things that are shared and it is inconsistent as to what.

For example under Extensions some, but not all, of my custom extensions are installed in both even though I didn’t install any under the demo environment. I would say that it is those that require an actual installation (like CodeRush) but that isn’t entirely true. For example ‘Extensibility Essentials 2019’ is installed in both but ‘CSS Tools 2019’ is not installed in the experimental instance. It is random, to me.

Another area is with VS settings themselves. Even with multiple instances VS shares some settings and there is nothing you can do about it. I wrote up a bug about this a while back and MS came back and said it was by design. So I periodically play the game of seeing my teaching settings getting overwritten by my normal settings and I have to import them again. I doubt the experimental instance version is going to fair much better.

I do think MS has come a long way on separating instances out but until all settings are different between instances (and experimental instances) then trying to run multiple VS instances/roots on the same machine is hit or miss. However for just demoing something I could see a use for this if you don’t already have another instance running. I’m personally running 3 different instances of the same edition on my machine. It is awful at update times but at least I get a semblance of separation.

Outside of people on the Visual Studio team demoing to the public- when would a normal dev want something like this?

Presumably the extensions/shortcuts/layout someone has installed make them more productive and make the IDE easier to use- a benefit when demoing something. I can’t ever see when I would want to demo with out my customizations.

A lot of people present at local user groups, coding conferences, internal learning sessions, large code review sessions with their team etc. Presenting with Visual Studio is a lot more common than you might initially think.

Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Organization > What is a poster presentation?

What is a poster presentation?

When preparing to present noteworthy research at an academic conference, its important to articulate your findings effectively, so it leaves a lasting impression on your peers. A common method for presenting research is through poster presentations. Learn what a poster presentation is, how to craft one for your next conference, and its benefits.

A poster presentation, or a poster session, is a type of research format presented on a poster by an individual or a group at a conference. These posters organize and display the thesis or hypothesis, methods, and outcomes of a research study in a way that’s visually pleasing for audience members. Attendees will listen to participants’ presentations and ask questions to engage in discussion. Typically, these sessions last between 1-2 hours. So, participants should be thoroughly prepared to effectively present throughout its duration.

Tell your story with captivating presentations

Powerpoint empowers you to develop well-designed content across all your devices

How do you create a poster presentation?

Poster presentations, unlike PowerPoint presentations , require physical design and production. Professional poster creation involves graphic artists, production, and team meetings. So, it’s important to outline a poster presentation timeline for your team to follow, keeping your presentation in mind to ensure ample time for completion.

To start outlining the poster design, identify its components. First, your title, authors, and institution should be placed at the top center of the poster. Organize the poster vertically and include the relevant sections – “Introduction”, “Methods”, “Results”, “Conclusions”, and “Recommendations”. Each section must include relevant and accurate content that summarizes your work, while being visually appealing to captivate its viewers.

Data visualization can be organized with pie charts, for survey or demographic results, infographics for complex information, and bar graphs for quantitative data. From a design perspective, prioritize readability and simplicity for your audience. Use a balanced color scheme, lines, frames, and other visual cues to highlight information.

What are the benefits of poster presentations?

Poster presentations communicate complex research in an effective manner, that offers benefits for the presenter and audience alike. These benefits include:

Visually engagement

As mentioned earlier, poster presentations should be visually engaging. Graphics, images, data visualizations and colors convey complex information, in a simpler format, so viewers can understand it.

Concise communication

Poster presentations are in a concise format. Its relevant sections – introductions, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations – are outlined in a digestible format, so readers can follow along. The concise format encourages presenters to communicate their findings clearly and briefly within the limited space available. Concise communication ensures viewers can follow their research topic, with comprehensible verbiage.

Networking opportunity

Poster presentations are delivered at conferences, a great platform for networking and collaboration. Presenters can connect with colleagues, researchers, and other peers who share similar research interests and expertise. Consequently, presenters can hope to develop their research with their peers or pursue additional opportunities.

Interactive discussion

Poster presentations facilitate interactive discussions between presenters and conference attendees. Viewers can interface directly with the presenter, ask questions and request clarification on aspects of their research. Presenters can improve their research spiel from insights they gained from their discussion.

Poster presentations offer researchers a platform to share their findings, network with peers in their field, and engage with others interested in their research. If you are preparing to present at a conference, follow these tips to effectively create and deliver your poster presentation. For more help with presenting research, learn more presentation tips .

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What’s the Matter With Madden?

After ESPN NFL 2K5 came out swinging in a battle of revered football video games, Madden scored an exclusive N.F.L. license. Twenty years later, its ratings are dismal.

Credit... Golden Cosmos

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By Emmanuel Morgan

• July 22, 2024

A burst of innovation in the battle for National Football League fans transformed sports video games in an unexpected way.

Twenty years ago this month, Sega aggressively promoted ESPN NFL 2K5, slashing its price and releasing it weeks before Madden NFL 2005, the more established franchise. The dynamic running game and gang tackles in NFL 2K5, which was developed by Visual Concepts, were complemented by its immersive presentation, with animation-specific commentary, a comprehensive halftime show and a first-person under-the-helmet mode.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, how did they do all of that this year?’” said Ian Cummings, a former producer for Madden, which is developed by Electronic Arts. “They clearly had thrown the kitchen sink at us.”

There’s a world in which Electronic Arts responded with further innovations that then spurred additional ideas from its primary challenger, creating a gaming golden age. And then there is what actually happened: Electronic Arts signed an exclusive license with the N.F.L. and its players’ union months after the showdown, becoming the sole studio permitted to use the league’s players, teams and other official markings in simulation video games.

The ramifications can be felt two decades later.

Both NFL 2K5 and Madden 2005 joined the pantheon of greatest sports video games , along with titles like NHL ’94, MVP Baseball 2005 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater . But there is a nagging sense that the genre has stagnated as the marketplace has consolidated.

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