Download CounterPoint
CounterPoint Version 1.3.1 is now available for free download
for non-commercial use on Windows
platforms.
For information on commercial licenses, please contact Prof. Ben
Bederson at
bederson@cs.umd.edu.
System Requirements
CounterPoint installs on Windows 98/NT/2000/XP machines that have
Microsoft Office 2000. The minimal system requirements are a 266 MHz
Pentium (or equivalent) processor with 96MB RAM. However, a faster
processor and more RAM will give better performance.
You can also improve CounterPoint's performance by reducing the color
quality. To do this, right click on the Windows Desktop and choose
"Properties" from the popup menu. Now choose the "Settings" tab in
the dialog box and choose "Medium (16 bit)" in the Color Quality list.
To further improve the performance, you can also reduce the
resolution. To do this, right click on the Windows Desktop and choose
"Properties" from the popup menu. Now choose the "Settings" tab in
the dialog box and move the "Screen Area" slider to a lower
resolution, such as 800x600.
Installing CounterPoint
-
=> Download version 1.4
of the Java Runtime Environment, freely available from
Sun
- => Download the
CounterPoint setup file (3.2 MB)
The CounterPoint file you download is called
counterpoint-1.3.1b-setup.exe.
Double-click on that file to open it. An installation Wizard
will then take you through the steps of installing CounterPoint.
Running CounterPoint
Once you have installed CounterPoint, open PowerPoint 2000. You should see
the CounterPoint icon 
on the
main PowerPoint toolbar. If you don't see the icon, make sure the
"Standard" toolbar is visible. You can verify this by right
clicking on the PowerPoint menubar or any PowerPoint toolbar. On the
popup menu, make sure there is a check beside the menu item
labelled "Standard." If this item does not have a check, click on it to
make the Standard toolbar visible.
At this point, you are ready to create or open your PowerPoint
presentation as normal. When you are ready to run CounterPoint, just press
this CounterPoint toolbar button. Once in CounterPoint, a tutorial is
availabe by going to the HELP->TUTORIAL menu item or you can
look at it online here. You can also look
at the CounterPoint User Manual online.
Please report any problems to counterpoint-info@cs.umd.edu.
Bug Fixes
-Updates in CounterPoint 1.3.1b Release on September 22, 2004 -
- Increased the maximum memory available to the Java VM
-Updates in CounterPoint 1.3.1 Release on June 23, 2004 -
- Now do a better job of detecting changes in resolution when starting a slide show.
- Also do some screen resolution detection between CP sessions.
-Since CounterPoint 1.3.002 Release on March 19, 2003 -
- Force PowerPoint's standard toolbar to be visible on first use
- Fixed a problem with setting slides visited when they are parents
in the hierarchy
-Since CounterPoint 1.2.3 Release on May 17, 2002 -
- Added function to automatically synchronize layout to path
- Now putting unique IDs on the PowerPoint slides so they can be identified when re-opening CounterPoint
- Simplified navigation controls - unified across editing and presentation views
- Added several dialogs to give more feedback on saving
- Added scroll-wheel zoom support in editing mode
- Fixed saving bugs with &'s in the text labels
- Layout defaults improved
- Added per-path-item properties to allow changing animation times on individual slide transitions
- Added threaded repainter to make the interface more responsive
- Added support for inserting images on CounterPoint surface
- Beta support for using PowerPoint to render the slides
- Since CounterPoint 1.2.2 Release on April 17, 2002 -
- Fixed a bug in rendering at high magnification when using text and the hierarchy. This caused performance problems.
- Fixed a bug in saving
- Since CounterPoint 1.2.1 Release on November 24, 2001 -
- Fixed a bug in rendering slides at high resolution when
slides are put into hierarchies.
- Fixed a bug in saving the bounds of the window to avoid problems when
CounterPoint crashes
- Fixed a bug in save/restore where the size of text labels weren't saved
properly
- Fixed a bug in the reading of extra slides added to an existing
presentation
- Fixed a bug in the display of numbers on the 1 dimensional slide sorter (the path list in edit canvas view)
- Switched to a slightly nicer installer
- Since CounterPoint 1.2 Release on September 25, 2001 -
- Fixed a bug in saving when slides have been deleted
- Since CounterPoint 1.1 Release on June 22, 2001 -
- Updated CounterPoint to take advantage of latest speed enhancements in
Java 1.4 Runtime. Should result in 2-3x speedups.
- Added an indicator to show CounterPoint loading progress.
- Since CounterPoint 1.0 RC1 Release on May 19, 2001 -
-
Fixed a problem with the CounterPoint installation that kept it from working
on machines without Visual Basic 6.
-
Fixed a bug in save/restore of hierarchical layouts where items
wouldn't be restored to the correct scale
-
Now kill the java process when closing the CounterPoint window for
more direct control over memory usage
-
Added a timer to hide the cursor - the hide time is 7 seconds as
found experimentally from PowerPoint
-
Fixed a bug with saving multi-line text labels created in CounterPoint
-
Changing focus with the TAB key on layout property text boxes now accepts
the value rather than reverting to the old value
-
Moved the CounterPoint state file to the CounterPoint directory
-
Added the ability to change the canvas background color
- Since CounterPoint 1.0 Beta Release on May 15, 2001 -
-
Fixed the "File->Exit" menu item to actually close the CounterPoint
window
-
Fixed the layout hierarchy so that slides are not initially added
in reverse order
-
Fixed several bugs with "collapse all" on the layout hierarchy
-
Made drag-and-drop highlighting on the layout hierarchy more consistent
-
Now set the root selected when switching to the layout hierarchy to
make clear that the root is initially selected
-
Fixed editing of the children magnification text box so that it
doesn't require appending a "%" sign
-
Fixed animated scrolling on the 1D path list (the one accompanying
the edit canvas) - scrolling up usually didn't work correctly
-
Fixed several bugs with navigation where the presentation could go
out of order or a single click could cause the path to increment
twice, skipping over a slide
-
Fixed bugs with the hierarchy in presentation mode - sometimes the
navigation rectangles wouldn't appear properly and the "UP" arrow key
sometimes functioned improperly
-
Fixed the Arc layout so that it lays out the slides clockwise with 0
degrees at the top (or 12 o'clock)
-
Fixed saving of Arc layout parameters - the arc-length was not being
restored correctly
-
Fixed some backwards compatibility problems with the file format
from the alpha version - it wasn't restoring text label positions
-
Fixed a subtle bug with layout parameters that are inherited from
parent slides
- Since CounterPoint 0.2 Alpha Release on February 1, 2001 -
-
Added Photoshop style "space bar" panning to the text event handler
-
Added a new "layout organizer" view that lets you organize your
slides in a hierarchy. This hierarchy can be used to automatically
layout slides according to some simple predefined shapes. It is also
used to simplify navigation during the presentation
-
Added ability to show these automated layout paths during the
presentation
-
Added "Navigation Rectangles" that appear in slide show mode when
the mouse is moved over the bounds defined by a subtree in the layout
hierarchy or the bounds defined by one of the views added to the
path
-
Added capability to change the color or visibility of these
"Navigation Rectangles"
-
Animated the scrollbar on the 1D path editor in the main edit
canvas view
-
Improved editing of paths
-
Added saving of the window state
