Charts in Slides

Charts have existed in Presenter from the start, but we hid them. Early versions were technically ready, but they didn’t work. We tried to dress them up, but design is not just how it looks…

We didn’t know exactly what was wrong with them, but we noticed that they encouraged the kind of tinkering Presenter is designed to avoid. Adding features is easy. Making things work takes time. It takes ten times the time in a focused writing app.

How it started

When we revisited charts after our template update. Our first instinct was to clean up the CSS and offer as many chart types as possible. Users could then choose the right one for each occasion.

Adding lots of choice and letting the user decide is a popular way to design apps. It’s the opposite way of how we usually do things. And yet, this time it seemed the right thing to do. Modern charting frameworks make it easy to offer 500 chart types, and more options look like more fun. Too many options, of course, was exactly the problem we couldn’t name.

What we learned

Most chart types add noise rather than clarity. We had to decide what’s useful. We’ve designed charts, tables, and infographics for years, but we had rarely stopped to think about their basic design principles. That changed after meeting Nick Desbarats at Smashing Conference this year and later reading his book, Practical Charts. It put structure to what we had only assumed before.

The eye opener: A small number of chart types cover most real use cases. Bar and line charts do most of the work. Even the popular pie charts only work under strict conditions. Many popular formats look impressive but make accurate reading harder. That sounded awfully familiar. So we did what we do best: We built charts around strong defaults and clear limits.

• Fewer chart types.
• Quiet colors.
• Layout constraints that keep charts readable across screen sizes.
• Limits on how many charts fit on a slide, because dense layouts reliably break charts.

Instead of adding a big library, we chose to offer the basics of how charts and responsive slides work. Giving a limited choice forces us to think about the story we want to tell and how to tell it best. Moving forward, we will, step by step, add new features, building on user needs, carefully, slowly, to not overcharge the feature and turn it into a procrastination thirst map.

Better Table Support, Alpha in Beta

Charts pushed us to improve tables. Good charts depend on good data input, which led to a new table editor and a lot of right-click features. This wasn’t planned, but necessary. Auto-formatting Markdown tables à la Canon Cat have been on our radar for a long time. iA Writer for Windows has had an alpha of it for quite some time. The current one is still an Alpha in a Beta, though. Don’t handle with care. Tell us where and how it lacks. Markdown tables can be done, but we need to go deeper, much deeper. (As soon as we have it done, brushed and polished, we will make them available in all our apps, but let’s take one step at a time.)

Try it

Charts in Presenter are now in beta. They are intentionally limited, usable, and simple. If you already use Presenter and rely on charts, this is the moment to try them and tell us where they fail. Frameworks can do everything. Presenter cannot, and should not. Your feedback will help us decide what belongs next, and what never should.