Adding a logo to brand your slide show

[Michael_Morrison]

Hi,

I've talked to several professors this summer about how to add a logo or graphic to the top of a slide show, to help "brand" the document. Here are a couple screenshots to illustrate what I mean:





In both of these examples, the graphic in question (the blue box in the first example, and the Wolfram logo in the second example) appears at the top of all of the slides, making the document instantly recognizable as the slides are flipped through.

The way to do this for your own documents is to use DockedCells. You can read about them in the documentation, but to make this easy, I've provided a notebook to help you add DockedCells to a slide show template. Simply download the CreatingASlideshowWithADockedCell.nb from here, open it up, and read through the instructions. The file contains a sample graphic, but you can use your own graphics by dragging and dropping them in the appropriate section in the notebook or by using the Import command. At the end, you should have your own, customized slide show template to use for presentations.

I hope some of you find this useful, and if you run into any trouble, reply to the thread and I'll help out.

Thanks,
Michael

[javiator]

Hi Michael,
I tried downloading CreatingASlideshowWithADockedCell.nb, but am unable to do so. Is it available elsewhere?
Thanks,
John

[Michael_Morrison]

John,

Strange --- did you get an error message? Let me try posting a direct link: http://members.wolfram.com/mmorrison/Notebooks/CreatingASlideshowWithADockedCell.nb

Does that work for you?

Thanks,
Michael

[javiator]

Hi Michael,
I don't know what is wrong. I click the link and the new link you supplied. I also copy and pasted the URL
to a new browser window and it just times out after a few minutes and Chrome prompts me to kill the page.
Thanks,
John

[Kathy_Bautista]

Hi John,

I've posted a copy of this notebook in the Wolfram Library Archive:
http://library.wolfram.com/infocenter/MathSource/7840/

If you're unable to download from there let me know and I'll email you the notebook directly.

-Kathy

[Tom_DeVries]

Thanks for posting this Michael!

Is there any way to make sure the docked cells can't be removed?

I have created a lot of lessons and would like to distribute them, but with a "header" or something that at least acknowledges where they came from.

It would be nice to be able to "protect" the file by making sure the docked cells stay there....

But I suspect any Mathematica user would be able to modify the docked cells option?

Tom

[Michael_Morrison]

Tom,

I don't know of a foolproof way to preserve DockedCells from someone who knows their way around. However, there are some things you can do, like setting Deployed->True at the Notebook level. This will suppress the cursor and prevent general editing of the notebook but will still preserve interactivity. This might be good enough, depending on your intended audience for distribution, of course...

Thanks!
Michael

[Michael_Morrison]

I should also mention that a question was raised about how to add DockedCells to a set of preexisting notebooks. (For example, suppose you have a collection of courseware that you've created and you want to add your contact information at the top of all of them.) This is actually pretty easy to do in Mathematica thanks to its file-handling capabilities. If anyone is interested, post or message me and I'll provide some instruction on how to do this.

Thanks,
Michael