How to write a screen presentation

If you are looking for a way to write a screen presentation you probably think about PowerPoint, or hopefully OpenOffice Impress. But such an application is t' suck to load. Actually all you need for a professional and beautiful presentation is a simple text editor.

Beamer is a LaTeX package which helps to create a PDF presentation. You will select a theme for the presentation, and type the titles, the sections and/or subsections, add some lists and the content.

To install Beamer on a Debian system type apt-get install latex-beamer.

Next try to "compile" this LaTeX example into PDF with the command pdflatex:

% example.tex
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[utf-8]{inputenc}
\usetheme{Berlin}

\title{Wireless Networks}
\author{P. Pepin, M. Massonnet}\institute{IUT Nancy-Charlemagne}

\begin{document}

% A nice frontpage
\frame{\titlepage}

% Followed by the outline
\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}

\section{Panorama of technologies}
\frame
{
        % This is an animation
        \begin{itemize}
        \item<1-> Bluetooth
        \item<2-> UMTS
        \item<3-> Wifi
        \end{itemize}
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{Bluetooth}
    caca
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{UMTS}
    pipi
}
\frame
{
    \frametitle{Wifi}
    cucul
}

\section{Local wireless networks}
\frame
{
        \textsc{Beamer}, is really beautiful!
}

\section{Network protocols}
\frame
{
        And it's easy.
}

\section{Security}
\frame
{
        \begin{itemize}
        \item<1-> Easy
        \item<2-> Fast
        \item<3-> Simple
        \end{itemize}
}

\end{document}

Brilliant! Isn't it? ;-)