Thumbstack – A Web-Based Presentation Application

A while back, my pal Zach posted about S5, “A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System.” Now, its important to note that S5 is trying to set up a standard and not develop a full blown application. S5 seems to be a solid foundation…all it really needs is a slick editor and I’m sold.

Well, as I’ve been waiting for and S5 editor to come along, Thumbstack has come along instead and I’ll be content goofing around with that for a while. While Thumbstack isn’t built off of the S5 standard, it is a sold web implementation of presentation software complete with a decent draggable presentation builder…themable to boot! (although the available themes are dumb right now, that’s sure to improve). The editor is a div based-DHTML pumped-Ajax integrated layout; the presentation itself seems to be Flash. Interesting stuff.

It shows promise, but there are a few things it lacks that I hope to see:

• More themes
• Slide transitions and animations (nothing too crazy, basic will do fine)
• Export to Powerpoint
• Ctrl+S to save
• While viewing a presentation, right clicking should give a contextual menu.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Thumbstack. Google recently bought Writely, which means they are interested in web-based Office software. They’ve got Gmail, an upcoming Calendar, a Word Processor, and a Webpage Builder. All they need now are solid presentation and spreadsheet applications. The race is on.