Looking for Aspose .NET Slides Alternatives

Question

I'm developing an ASP .NET web site that will allow users to view and print Microsoft PowerPoint slides.

Right away, I knew that Aspose had a product that would likely allow me to do this. What I'd like to do is look at alternatives just to say to management, "Yes, I've looked at the alternatives and they are...."

I can't seem to find any other than the open source project on Source Forge which seems to be mostly dead and I'm not even sure if it's something that would meet my needs anyway: http://b2xtranslator.sourceforge.net/

Hence my question: Is anyone aware of any alternatives to Aspose Slides .NET? Please list them if so. If you are aware there are no decent alternatives, I would find that information useful as well.

Thanks a ton.

Answer 1

I once searched for such a product as well, and spent a good amount of time looking for alternatives. However, the only one I found was the dreaded COM Automation of PowerPoint, which is entirely unacceptable if you are running on a server.

There are lots of other formats to go to - you can generate HTML/javascript if you just want simple "slides". SVG /PDFs, etc. In fact, I would recommend looking at Slidy -if it fits your needs it is pretty simple to generate slide shows (and you can use some javascript for animations and such) and very easy to get user acceptance on.

But some users may insist on Powerpoint, or you may need the features it has. So if you really want to create powerpoint files through code without running an instance of PowerPoint, Aspose.Slides seems like the only choice at the moment - and it is quite full featured at that.