Better Slides is a plugin for the Mac OS X Preview application. Preview only supports a single style of display for PDFs. For example, I have my preferences set to display documents in single-page continuous mode. That's fine when viewing a book-like document, but it doesn't work well for slides. Better Slides looks at the width-to-height ratio of the document, and if it matches a standard screen size (4:3 or 16:9), it will switch the display mode to single-page, non-continuous, hide page breaks, and resizes the window to fit the document exactly.

Better Slides will check if the width-to-height ratio of the first page of a PDF matches a ratio set in the Better Slides preferences file. You can change the ratios recognized as presentations by editing the file, located at ~/Library/Preferences/org.playhaus.BetterSlides.plist. This file only appears after you have installed Better Slides, and opened and quit Preview once.

Better Slides requires SIMBL. Once SIMBL is installed, place Better Slides.bundle in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/.

• Better Slides 1.0 (Universal binary)
• Better Slides 1.0 source code

Please send any contributions to Jonathon Mah.

Better Slides is licensed under the BSD license, as follows:

Copyright © 2007, Playhaus All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of the Playhaus nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors “as is” and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.