Resource/Misc

Every version of Office has its own variation of the application icons. Here is a quick history:

Office 2003 used square “chiclet” icons:

Office 2007 used alpha transparency for unique, non-square, icons and added gradients throughout:

Office 2010 used the solid square of 2003, filled with the icons and gradients of 2007, and added uniform identifying letters for each app (despite the full application suite had 3 “P” icons):

Office 2013 has both a solid square version and a alpha transparency version. The icons are developed direct from the Microsoft Metro style guide, which is simplified icons, but retaining the identifying letters (and yes, still 3 P’s):

When PowerPoint 2013 is launched, one of the immediate reactions is the orange bars and accents in the UI. One of the constants for Office is each application has an identifying color. Looking through the generations of icons, PowerPoint is orange, Word is blue, Excel is green, OneNote is purple, etc. So by the luck of history, the most visual application, PowerPoint, has one of the most offending/conflicting/glaring colors associated with it… I can say, based on the early builds of PowerPoint I looked at, the UI could have been much more distracting.

– Troy @ TLC

This FREE tool is a must for every designer, tech, and creative using a PC – the Instant Eyedropper tool is the easiest way I’ve found to quickly identify and use colors on screen.

Instant Eyedropper is accessed through the system tray and is easy to use. Click the icon to launch, hover around the display until you get to the color that needs identification, and click to copy the HEX code right to the clipboard.

For many live meetings, a speaker timer, a countdown clock presenters on stage see to know how much longer they have in their allotted time, is very valuable. There are speaker timer units that use proprietary control unit and display, software to run on a computer and display on a monitor (my favorite is “SpeakerTimer Pro” by the company that developed the Playback Pro system – it has the “Timewarp” feature to smoothly adjust the timer to be what you need, not what a real clock would say) and I also have a countdown slide deck (120 slides set to auto advance every 60 seconds).

But having a full computer inline for such a simple task is overkill. Here is a recent show where I loaded up my countdown presentation into Keynote on the iPad, connected the iPad to the monitor and saved a lot of desk space (and lightened my tech case by not needing to pack a computer for the task).

– Troy @ TLC