Whenever you add a slide, the program returns you to this menu to make choices. The font function is equally impressive, providing previews and several hundred options. The danger, though, is that having so many choices makes it easy to lose track of your style, and finding your original choice among the 200 templates in the style menu can be difficult unless you wrote down the name. As in PowerPoint, your best approach may be to use the master slide option from the pull-down menu, which allows you to set style, colors and fonts that will not waver. Also, the advisor function on the studio bar can check your slides for design flaws and offer quick-fix tips.
Object creation is another simple feature with a nice option for adding a quick shape.
By choosing this option on the tool bar you get more ready-made shape choices than a box of Lucky Charms cereal offers. When you've created a shape, the slider edit bars allow you to manipulate it from access points to create just the right effect. Add the fill option, with its several kaleidoscope textures, and the feature's versatility becomes obvious. From the slide pull-down menu, edit screenshow effects provides wipes, builds and even animated characters to dress up your slides. As you can with PowerPoint's hyperlinks feature, you can use Harvard Graphics' hypershow tab to create links for nonlinear jumps to other slides or for links to the Web.