PowerPoint Inking Toolbar Changelog

- New to version 3.1 (available for download here)

- New buttons available in 3.1:

- Color_Picker: Hit this button during a slide show in order to select a color for the pen from a color picker panel. Recently used colors form the color picker will be automatically saved on the right side of the panel, so that you can easily re-select them later.

- Copy_Color: Once you click this button, the next time you click anywhere (inside or outside of the slide show), the color where you click will be copied and transformed into a pen of that color. When you first click on the button, the button will take the color of the last copied color, on which you can click in order to re-use this color.

- Timer_1: This button allows you to show/hide a timer during a slide show. The time on the timer is variable and can be adjusted with buttons on the timer.

- Timer_2: This button allows you to show/hide a timer during a slide show. The time on the timer is set to a specific value defined by the user in the .ini settings file.

- AddSlide_Color: Add a completely new slide during a slide show with a background color of your choice that can be customized in the .ini settings file.

- AddSlide_Picture: Add a completely new slide during a slide show with a background picture of your choice that can be customized in the .ini settings file.

- Other changes:

- The volume up/down buttons are now repeat buttons: as long as you click on them, the volume will keep increasing/decreasing.

- Fixed a bug where the toolbar instructions wouldn't show up correctly when using the compiled .exe version of the toolbar during a slide show.

- Cleaned up some of the code.

- Added the AHK forum address at the top of the instructions.

- New to version 3.0 (available for download here)

- Instructions on how to use and customize the toolbar are now included in the script. The first time you run the script, you will be asked if you want to read the instructions. The instructions are also available at any time through the "Toolbar Options" submenu.

- A second independent toolbar can be shown, optionally. By default, this toolbar is a "navigation toolbar" to allow navigating more easily between slides. This second toolbar is independent of the first one and can be completely customized independently. This second toolbar can be shown/hidden through the main toolbar's menu, or can be set to appear whenever the program starts. Alternatively, a button can be added on the main toolbar to quickly show/hide the second toolbar.

- New buttons available in 3.0:

- All_Slides: Show the "All Slides" dialog window (same as pressing CTRL + s during a slide show).

- Blank: This is a completely transparent button with no other function, which allows you to insert a transparent space in your toolbar to separate it into sections.

- Context_Menu: Show the context menu (same as when right-clicking on a slide or pressing SHIFT + F10 during a slide show).

- DuplicateSlide: Create after the current slide a copy of the current slide, then move to this duplicate slide.

- ResetSlide: Reset the current slide, which can be used to quickly reset the animations on a slide or to erase all annotations. Useful when you want to repeat the animations on a slide.

- Show_Hide_Toolbar_2: Show or hide the second toolbar. This can also be done through the toolbar's menu, or through hotkeys

- Start_Show_Presenter_View: Start the slide show in Presenter view (same as pressing ALT + F5 from slide edit mode).

- Start_Show_Window: Start the slide show in windowed mode without having to go to slide show options.

- "Numbers" and "Enter": The second toolbar by default includes numbers 1-9 and 0, and also Enter. This allows for quick navigation between slides. for example, you can use these buttons to punch in "1 + 2 + Enter" to quickly navigate to slide 12.

- Hotkeys can now be set to commands that are accessible through the program's menus (in addition to commands that were previously available through the program's buttons).

- The toolbar's main and tray menus can now be customized much more extensively. See the included instructions. Also:

- The "Check for update" menu option has been added to the "Toolbar Options" submenu. Alternatively, it can still be added as an individual menu item.

- A "Start the slide show" submenu has been added, which allows choosing to start the slide show from the beginning, from the current slide, in Presenter View, in "window" mode.

- A "Combined submenu" menu option has been added. This allows adding a customizable submenu to the main and tray menus in order to make these menus seem less cluttered.

- In the "Toolbar Options" submenu, there is now an option to toggle on/off the toolbar's autohide function (i.e. set the toolbar to always be visible, or to automatically hide when another program is active.)

- The code for all the embedded images has been modified for better compatibility.

- A bug was fixed wherein the background of the toolbar wasn't transparent when a space was added between buttons.

- New to version 2.4 (available for download here)

- The toolbar can now be set to auto-hide whenever the slide show is not the active window, and reappear when the slide show becomes active again.

- Through the settings, the toolbar can now be set to work when the slide show is run as a "windowed" slide show.

- The Next/Previous buttons now work to change slides even if the slide show is not the active window.

- There is a new mode for the "Laser" function that is available for users of the Office 365 desktop version of PowerPoint. When the user switches to the laser tool in PowerPoint, the normal function is that the previous tool that was being used (for example, a pen, the highlighter, or the eraser) gets disabled. With this new laser function, the laser is just a "toggle" that can be used at the same time as other tools. For example, the pen can be used at the same time as the laser is activated. This new laser mode can be disabled in the toolbar's settings in order to instead use the normal PowerPoint laser mode.

- New buttons available in version 2.4:

- Last_Viewed_Slide: Allows to quickly go to the last viewed slide. This button can be very useful to navigate between two different sections of a presentation, especially together with the Slide_Sorter button.

- White_Screen: Makes the screen go white during a presentation (which can normally be done by pressing "w" on a keyboard).

- Black_Screen: Makes the screen go black during a presentation (which can normally be done by pressing "b" on a keyboard).

- Cursor_Idle: The default "Cursor" button that was available in previous versions of the toolbar switches to the normal arrow cursor. This new "Cursor_Idle" button switches to the built-in PowerPoint arrow cursor that disappears when the cursor doesn't move for a few seconds.

- The menu items that are available in the toolbar's main menu and in the tray icon menu can now be modified.

- Two new menu commands were added: "show/hide the toolbar", and "visit the Boisvert lab website to look for an update".

- When the toolbar is first used, it creates a .ini file in which the settings are saved. It now verifies that the .ini file was successfully created before going further.

- When the user changes the list of toolbar buttons, there is a check to verify that all the buttons in the list exist among the possible buttons.

- As much as possible, the commands in the toolbar that previously relied on sending keyboard hotkeys to PowerPoint have now been replaced by the use of native PowerPoint functions, which should increase the reliability of the button commands.

- New to version 2.2 (available for download here)

- Now compatible with the PowerPoint add-in.

- Added the default hotkey of "Ctrl + Shift + Alt + t" to show/hide the toolbar.

- Changed the menu icon for "projector" as it was causing a bug with Windows 7.

- New to version 2.1 (available for download here)

- Added a new button command to add a blank black slide to act as a blackboard.

- Added the capacity to add keyboard shortcuts to most of the toolbar's commands and to show/hide the toolbar.

- Added the option to not show the toolbar when the program starts.

- Subsequently, the toolbar can be shown by using a hotkey or by clicking on the program's tray icon.

- This means that you can use this program, for example, to quickly switch between pen colors using hotkeys without ever showing the toolbar.

- Added options to set if left- or right-clicking the tray icon will either show/hide the toolbar or show the toolbar's menu.

- Added a new command to create a blank black page during a presentation to act as a "blackboard", to complement the "whiteboard" command that was already present.

- New to version 2.0 (available for download here)

- To simplify the installation process, the program is made available as the .ahk script. Just install AutoHotkey before using the script.

- The script is now self-contained and all images have now been coded into the script so no folder needs to be created.

- On first use, a .ini file for the settings will be created.

- The .ini file now contains more detailed instructions on how to customize the toolbar.

- The buttons included by default in the toolbar have been changed to include the "laser" and the new "cursor highlight" buttons. This can easily be modifed by editing the .ini settings file.

- The demo video above has been updated.