H HISTORY.EXE _ [] X
95
C:\DECKS> RUN HISTORY.EXE VER 1.0 — JULY 2026

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PRESENTATIONS

From acetate transparencies to AI-generated decks — sixty years of trying to make the point stick.

*** WELCOME TO HISTORY.EXE *** 60 YEARS OF SLIDES IN 10 SCREENS *** PRESS ANY ARROW KEY OR CLICK TO BEGIN *** NO BULLET POINTS WERE HARMED ***
A DEMO DECK FOR THE FRONTEND SLIDES SKILL
TEMPLATE: RETRO WINDOWS
READY
T TIMELINE.PRJ _ [] X

TIMELINE — 1965 -> TODAY

Sixty years in five stops

1965 Overhead era Acetate, markers, and a very hot lamp.
1987 PowerPoint 1.0 Forethought ships Presenter for the Mac.
2011 The browser deck reveal.js makes HTML the stage.
2023 AI joins in One prompt drafts the whole deck.
TODAY Frontend Slides Single-file decks, styled by a skill.
SOURCE: COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM
SPAN: 60 YEARS
5 STOPS LOADED
O OVERHEAD.BMP _ [] X

Era 01 — the overhead projector

1960s–1990s: one lamp, one lens, and whatever you could draw on plastic.

TRANSPARENCY VIEWER

Q3 REVENUE (drawn in marker)

FIG 1. A chart, drawn by hand, projected at 500 watts.

KNOWN ISSUES
  • >Lamp burns out mid-lecture
  • >Transparencies stick together
  • >Everything is handwritten
  • >The fan is louder than you
  • >Undo requires a wet cloth

STATUS: WONTFIX — hardware retired

CLASSROOMS

3M+

▲ UBIQUITOUS

by the mid-1980s

LAMP POWER

500W

▲ VERY HOT

do not touch the stage

IDEAS PER SHEET

1

■ CONSTANT

an accidental best practice

SOURCE: LECTURE HALLS EVERYWHERE
ERA: 1960–1990
OBSOLETE
P POWERPNT.EXE _ [] X

Era 02 — 1987: the deck goes digital

Three numbers that turned slides into software.

YEAR

1987

Presenter 1.0 ships for the Macintosh

  • >Built by Gaskins and Austin
  • >Black-and-white, Mac only
  • >Made for overhead printouts

Renamed PowerPoint

PRICE PAID

$14M

Microsoft buys Forethought months later

  • >Forethought of Sunnyvale, CA
  • >Closed July 1987
  • >Windows version lands 1990

First major MS acquisition

DAILY DECKS

30M

Presentations made every day by the 2010s

  • >Around 1B installs worldwide
  • >"Deck" becomes office slang
  • >Clip art era begins

Give or take a keynote

DESKTOP PRESENTATION MARKET
95%

Peak share of installed presentation software, late 1990s.

SOURCE: COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM
PERIOD: 1987–2010
INSTALLED
T TUFTE.DOC _ [] X

THE BACKLASH — 2003

“
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Edward Tufte

"PowerPoint is Evil" — Wired, September 2003

W WARNING.EXE X
⚠

This presentation contains 47 bullet points and 12 slide transitions.

OK Rethink
FILE: THE COGNITIVE STYLE OF POWERPOINT
ON THE RECORD
E EXPLORER.EXE — C:\WEB_DECKS _ [] X

Era 03 — the deck escapes to the browser

HTML stops being just for pages. Every talk gets a URL.

-📁C:\WEB_DECKS
+📄1997— lecture01.htm, hand-written; view source was the tutorial
+📁2005_S5— Eric Meyer's standards-based slide show
+📁2006_CLOUD— decks move into the browser tab for good
-📁2011_REVEALJS— HTML decks go mainstream
📄index.html— the whole talk, one file
📄theme.css— the whole design system
+📁2019_ONWARD— every conference talk gets a URL
Address: http://slides.example.com/talk/#/6
WHY THE BROWSER WON
  • >A URL is the new attachment
  • >CSS is the animation engine
  • >Version control loves plain text
  • >View source is free education
  • >No license key required
x Open standard
x Runs on anything with a screen
PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.1
FORMAT: HTML + CSS
6 OBJECT(S)
A AI.LOG _ [] X

Era 04 — the deck writes itself

2023 onward: describe the talk, review the slides.

C:\> claude "make me a deck about our Q3 results"

PARSING INTENT .............. OK

PICKING A TEMPLATE .......... RETRO-WINDOWS

RESISTING AI SLOP ........... OK

WRITING 10 SLIDES ........... DONE

CHECKING TEXT OVERFLOW ...... 0 ERRORS

DECK.HTML SAVED — 1 FILE, 0 DEPENDENCIES

C:\>

WHAT CHANGED
  • >Outline to deck in minutes
  • >Design systems on tap
  • >The bottleneck is taste, not tools
  • >Humans still own the story
BENCHMARKS
DRAFTING TIME SAVED92%
TASTE STILL REQUIRED100%
INPUT: ONE PROMPT
OUTPUT: DECK.HTML
GENERATING
L LOOP.INI _ [] X

HOW DECKS GET MADE NOW

▸
▾
◂
▴

The modern deck loop

v2.0 — runs continuously

01Prompt

Describe the talk you owe

02Generate

AI drafts slides and styling

03Present

Ship the deck to the room

04Refine

Feedback tunes the next prompt

CADENCE: EVERY TALK
STATION 04 FEEDS STATION 01
LOOPING
F FRONTEND.EXE _ [] X

Now — Frontend Slides

Presentations as software, on purpose this time.

SINGLE FILE
xOne .html — zero build steps
xTailwind and fonts via CDN
xOpen it, present it, email it

Weight: one attachment, no installer

FIXED STAGE
xAuthored at 1920 × 1080
xScales whole to any screen
xLetterbox, never reflow

Ratio: 16:9, everywhere, always

MOTION
xCSS-only choreography
xStaggered entrance reveals
xRespects reduced motion

Engine: transitions + keyframes

STYLE SYSTEM
x12 presets + bold templates
xLayout presets fix composition
xThis one: RETRO WINDOWS

Active: retro-windows/design.md

Generate Present Export PDF Deploy
AI SLOP RESISTANCE
MAX
ENGINE: CLAUDE CODE SKILL
OUTPUT: ONE FILE
LIVE
S SHUTDOWN.EXE _ [] X
END
C:\DECKS> SHUTDOWN /DECK /T 0 SCREEN 10 / 10

IT'S NOW SAFE TO TURN OFF YOUR PROJECTOR.

Sixty years, four eras, one lesson: the tool keeps changing, the point still has to stick. Thanks for watching.

Repo

github.com/dreamid27/frontend-slides

Format

One self-contained .html file

Template

Retro Windows

Made with Frontend Slides — github.com/dreamid27/frontend-slides
GOODBYE
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