Edit slides in your browser

The editor is new and marked experimental. It only ever rewrites the parts of your file you change, and every change can be undone, but keep a copy of decks you care about while it matures.

You can write slides in any text editor. If you prefer clicking and typing in forms, mdeck also has a visual editor:

mdeck edit my-talk.md

This opens a page on your own computer with three parts:

• Slides, on the left: the list of slides. Select one, add a new one from a list of layouts, duplicate it, remove it, or move it up and down.
• Preview, in the middle: your presentation, always showing the selected slide. Use the buttons underneath to step through points and slides.
• Details, on the right: what the selected slide contains. Every layout has one or more text areas for its content, and some have settings such as a picture or the width of two columns. Speaker notes and the slide's name are here too. The Markdown tab shows the same slide as plain text, if you prefer that.

The Deck tab in the right panel changes the whole presentation: the theme, the colors, your name and title, and the slide shape.

Changes are saved as you go#

There is no save button. Every change is written into your slide file within a moment; the status next to the file name says Saved when it is done. Undo and redo (⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z, or Ctrl on Windows and Linux) work across everything you change, and the file follows along.

Because the file is the only copy, you can keep your text editor open at the same time. When you save there, the visual editor shows the change. If both change the same file at the same moment, the editor asks which version to keep.

The editor only ever rewrites the parts of the file you change. Your blank lines, comments and the order of everything else stay as they are.

Palettes, themes and designs#

The second tab at the top, Palettes, themes & templates, lets you make your own looks and slide designs. They are saved in an extensions folder next to your slide file, so they travel with the talk.

• A palette is a set of colors. Pick a color for each role and see the preview repaint at once.
• A theme is a whole look: fonts, sizes, spacing and the rules that arrange each slide. The color and size values are a form; the arrangement rules are CSS in a text area.
• A template is a slide design: which content areas it has, which settings it accepts, and how it is drawn. The areas and settings are a form; the drawing code is a small Preact component in a text area.

The palettes, themes and templates that come with mdeck cannot be changed in place. Choose one and press Copy into this deck to edit to start from it under a new name.

Keyboard shortcuts#

Good to know#

• mdeck edit runs only on your computer. It is not a website other people can open.
• The editor checks your slides the same way mdeck check does and shows problems next to the slide they belong to.
• To present, use the Present button at the top right, or run mdeck present my-talk.md.