Spectacle

[![Travis Status][trav_img]][trav_site] ReactJS based Presentation Library

Spectacle Boilerplate

Contents

• Getting Started
• One Page
• Development
• Build & Deployment
• Presenting
• Controls
• Fullscreen
• PDF Export
• Basic Concepts
  • Main file
  • Themes
    • createTheme(colors, fonts)
• FAQ
• Tag API
  • Main Tags
    • Deck
    • Slide (Base)
    • Notes
    • MarkdownSlides
  • Layout Tags
    • Layout
    • Fit
    • Fill
  • Markdown Tag
    • Markdown
  • Magic Tag
    • Magic
  • Element Tags
    • Appear
    • BlockQuote, Quote and Cite (Base)
    • CodePane (Base)
    • Code (Base)
    • ComponentPlayground
    • GoToAction (Base)
    • Heading (Base)
    • Image (Base)
    • Link (Base)
    • List & ListItem (Base)
    • S (Base)
    • Table, TableRow, TableBody, TableHeader, TableHeaderItem and TableItem (Base)
    • Text (Base)
    • Typeface
  • Base Props
• Third Party Extensions

Getting Started

The new best way to get started is by running create-react-app my-presentation --scripts-version spectacle-scripts. This will use create-react-app to create almost everything you need. This however, doesn't include publish scripts, and ejecting is required for fancy stuff.

The second best way to get started is by using the Spectacle Boilerplate.

Alternatively, you can npm install spectacle and write your own build configurations. We also provide full UMD builds (with a Spectacle global variable) of the library at dist/spectacle.js and dist/spectacle.min.js for more general use cases. You could, for example, include the library via a script tag with: https://unpkg.com/spectacle@VERSION/dist/spectacle.min.js.

Note that we have webpack externals for react, react-dom, and prop-types, so you will need to provide them in your upstream build or something like linking in via script tags in your HTML page for all three libraries. This comports with our project dependencies which place these three libraries in peerDependencies.

But really, it is SO much easier to just use the boilerplate. Trust me.

One Page

To aid with speedy development / kicking the tires on spectacle, we support using a simple boilerplate HTML page with a bespoke script tag that contains your entire presentation. The rest of the setup will take care of transpiling your React/ESnext code, providing Spectacle, React, and ReactDOM libraries, and being raring to go with a minimum of effort.

We can start with this project's sample at one-page.html. It's essentially, the same presentation as the fully-built-from-source version, with a few notable exceptions:

1. There are no imports or requires. Everything must come from the global namespace. This includes Spectacle, React, ReactDOM and all the Spectacle exports from ./src/index.js -- Deck, Slide, themes, etc.

2. The presentation must include exactly one script tag with the type text/spectacle that is a function. Presently, that function is directly inserted inline into a wrapper code boilerplate as a React Component render function. The wrapper is transpiled. There should not be any extraneous content around it like outer variables or comments.

   Good examples:

   Bad examples of what not to do:

... with those guidelines in mind, here's the boilerplate that you can literally copy-and-paste into an HTML file and start a Spectacle presentation that works from the get go!

    
    
    <title>Spectacle</title>
    
    
    


    <div id="root"></div>
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

Development

After downloading the boilerplate, your first order of business is to open terminal and run npm install

Next run rm -R .git to remove the existing version control.

Then, to start up the local server, run npm start

Open a browser and hit https://localhost:3000, and we are ready to roll

Build & Deployment

Building the dist version of the slides is as easy as running npm run build:dist

If you want to deploy the slideshow to surge, run npm run deploy

⚠️ If you are deploying the dist version to GitHub Pages, note that the built bundle uses an absolute path to the /dist/ directory while GitHub Pages requires the relative ./dist/ to find any embedded assets and/or images. A very hacky way to fix this is to edit one place in the produced bundle, as shown in this GitHub issue.

Presenting

Spectacle comes with a built in presenter mode. It shows you a slide lookahead, current time and your current slide:

Otherwise, it can also show you a stopwatch to count the elapsed time:

To present:

• Run npm start
• Open two browser windows on two different screens
• On your screen visit https://localhost:3000/. You will be redirected to a URL containing the slide id.
• Add presenter& or presenter&timer immediately after the questionmark, e.g.: https://localhost:3000/#/0?presenter or https://localhost:3000/#/0?presenter&timer
• On the presentation screen visit https://localhost:3000/
• Give an amazingly stylish presentation

Note: Any windows/tabs in the same browser that are running Spectacle will sync to one another, even if you don't want to use presentation mode

Check it out:

You can toggle the presenter or overview mode by pressing respectively alt+p and alt+o.

Controls

Key Combination	Function
Alt/Option + Right Arrow	Next Slide
Alt/Option + Left Arrow	Previous Slide
Alt/Option + Space	Next Slide
Alt/Option + Shift + Space	Previous Slide
Alt/Option + O	Toggle Overview Mode
Alt/Option + P	Toggle Presenter Mode
Alt/Option + T	Toggle Timer in Presenter Mode
Alt/Option + A	Start autoplay (if enabled)

Fullscreen

Fullscreen can be toggled via browser options, or by hovering over the bottom right corner of your window until the fullscreen icon appears and clicking it.

PDF Export

Exporting a totally sweet looking PDF from your totally sweet looking Spectacle presentation is absurdly easy. You can either do this via the browser, or from the command line:

CLI

• Run npm install spectacle-renderer -g
• Run npm start on your project and wait for it to build and be available
• Run spectacle-renderer
• A totally cool PDF is created in your project directory

For more options and configuration of this tool, check out:

https://github.com/FormidableLabs/spectacle-renderer

Browser

• Run npm start
• Open https://localhost:3000/
• Add export& after the ? on the URL of page you are redirected to, e.g.: https://localhost:3000/#/?export&_k=wbyhif
• Bring up the print dialog (ctrl or cmd + p)
• Check "Background Graphics" to on if you are about that life
• Change destination to "Save as PDF", as shown below:

If you want to print your slides, and want a printer friendly version, simply repeat the above process but instead print from https://localhost:3000/?export&print

Basic Concepts

Main file

Your presentation files & assets will live in the presentation folder.

The main .js file you write your deck in is /presentation/index.js

Check it out here in the boilerplate.

// index.js

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import {
  Appear, BlockQuote, Cite, CodePane, Code, Deck, Fill, Fit,
  Heading, Image, Layout, ListItem, List, Quote, Slide, Text
} from 'spectacle';

export default class extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      
        
          
        
      
    );
  }
}

Here is where you can use the library's tags to compose your presentation. While you can use any JSX syntax here, building your presentation with the supplied tags allows for theming to work properly.

The bare minimum you need to start is a Deck element and a Slide element. Each Slide element represents a slide inside of your slideshow.

Themes

In Spectacle, themes are functions that return style objects for screen & print.

You can import the default theme from:

import createTheme from "spectacle/lib/themes/default";

Or create your own based upon the source.

index.js is what you would edit in order to create a custom theme of your own, using object based styles.

You will want to edit index.html to include any web fonts or additional CSS that your theme requires.

createTheme(colors, fonts)

Spectacle's functional theme system allows you to pass in color and font variables that you can use on your elements. The fonts configuration object can take a string for a system font or an object that specifies it‘s a Google Font. If you use a Google Font you can provide a styles array for loading different weights and variations. Google Font tags will be automatically created. See the example below:

const theme = createTheme({
  primary: "red",
  secondary: "blue"
}, {
  primary: "Helvetica",
  secondary: { name: "Droid Serif", googleFont: true, styles: [ "400", "700i" ] }
});

The returned theme object can then be passed to the Deck tag via the theme prop, and will override the default styles.

FAQ

How can I easily style the base components for my presentation?

Historically, custom styling in Spectacle has meant screwing with a theme file, or using gross !important overrides. We fixed that. Spectacle is now driven by emotion, so you can bring your own styling library, whether its emotion itself, or something like styled-components or glamorous. For example, if you want to create a custom Heading style:

import styled from 'styled-components';
import { Heading } from 'spectacle';

const CustomHeading = styled(Heading)`
  font-size: 1.2em;
  color: papayawhip;
`;

How can I separate my slides into other files?

Until this release, you would have to do some array shenanigans, but now you can just wrap those slides with an element that has a special prop:

// mySlides.js
export default class mySlides extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div>
        1
        2
        3
      </div>
    )
  }
}

Tag API

In Spectacle, presentations are composed of a set of base tags. We can separate these into three categories: Main tags, Layout tags & Element tags.

Main Tags

Deck

The Deck tag is the root level tag for your presentation. It supports the following props:

Name	PropType	Description
controls	PropTypes.bool	Show control arrows when not in fullscreen
contentHeight	PropTypes.numbers	Baseline content area height (default: 700)
contentWidth	PropTypes.numbers	Baseline content area width (default: 1000)
history	PropTypes.object	Accepts custom configuration for history
progress	PropTypes.string	Accepts pacman, bar, number or none. To override the color, change the 'quarternary' color in the theme.
theme	PropTypes.object	Accepts a theme object for styling your presentation
transition	PropTypes.array	Accepts slide, zoom, fade or spin, and can be combined. Sets global slide transitions. Note: If you use the 'scale' transition, fitted text won't work in Safari.
transitionDuration	PropTypes.number	Accepts integer value in milliseconds for global transition duration.
autoplay	PropTypes.bool	Automatically advance slides.
autoplayDuration	PropTypes.number	Accepts integer value in milliseconds for global autoplay duration, defaults to 7000.

Slide (Base)

The slide tag represents each slide in the presentation. Giving a slide tag an id attribute will replace its number based navigation hash with the id provided. It supports the following props, in addition to any of the props outlined in the Base class props listing:

Name	PropType	Description
align	PropTypes.string	Accepts a space delimited value for positioning interior content. The first value can be flex-start (left), center (middle), or flex-end (right). The second value can be flex-start (top) , center (middle), or flex-end (bottom). You would provide this prop like align="center center", which is its default.
controlColor	PropTypes.string	Used to override color of control arrows on a per slide basis, accepts color aliases, or valid color values.
goTo	PropTypes.number	Used to navigate to a slide for out-of-order presenting. Slide numbers start at 1. This can also be used to skip slides as well.
id	PropTypes.string	Used to create a string based hash.
maxHeight	PropTypes.number	Used to set max dimensions of the Slide.
maxWidth	PropTypes.number	Used to set max dimensions of the Slide.
notes	PropTypes.string	Text which will appear in the presenter mode. Can be HTML.
onActive	PropTypes.func	Optional function that is called with the slide index when the slide comes into view.
progressColor	PropTypes.string	Used to override color of progress elements on a per slide basis, accepts color aliases, or valid color values.
transition	PropTypes.array	Accepts slide, zoom, fade, spin, or a function, and can be combined. Sets the slide transition. This will affect both enter and exit transitions. Note: If you use the 'scale' transition, fitted text won't work in Safari.
transitionIn	PropTypes.array	Specifies the slide transition when the slide comes into view. Accepts the same values as transition.
transitionOut	PropTypes.array	Specifies the slide transition when the slide exits. Accepts the same values as transition.
transitionDuration	PropTypes.number	Accepts integer value in milliseconds for slide transition duration.

Wrapping Slides

If you author your slides in another file or want any kind of grouping that requires one additional level of nesting, you can add a hasSlideChildren prop to their parent element. This lets Spectacle identify that it is a wrapper, and will disregard the heirarchy instead opting to read the child slides as if the wrapper was not present.

Transition Function

Spectacle now supports defining custom transitions. The function prototype is (transitioning: boolean, forward: boolean) => Object. The transitioning param is true when the slide enters and exits. The forward param is true when the slide is entering, false when the slide is exiting. The function returns a style object. You can mix string-based transitions and functions. Styles provided when transitioning is false will appear during the lifecyle of the slide. An example is shown below:

 {
      const angle = forward ? -180 : 180;
      return {
        transform: `
          translate3d(0%, ${transitioning ? 100 : 0}%, 0)
          rotate(${transitioning ? angle : 0}deg)
        `,
        backgroundColor: transitioning ? '#26afff' : '#000'
      };
    }
  ]}
>

Notes

The notes tag allows to use any tree of react elements as the notes of a slide. It is used as a child node of a slide tag and its children override any value given as the notes attribute of its parent slide.

  
    <h4>Slide notes</h4>
    <ol>
      <li>First note</li>
      <li>Second note</li>
    </ol>
  
  {/* Slide content */}

MarkdownSlides

The MarkdownSlides function lets you create a single or multiple slides using Markdown. It can be used as a tagged template literal or a function. Three dashes (---) are used as a delimiter between slides.

Tagged Template Literal Usage

  {MarkdownSlides`
## Slide One Title
Slide Content
---
## Slide Two Title
Slide Content
  `}

Function Usage

import slidesMarkdown from "raw-loader!markdown.md";


  {MarkdownSlides(slidesMarkdown)}

Layout Tags

Layout tags are used for layout using Flexbox within your slide. They are Layout, Fit & Fill.

Layout

The layout tag is used to wrap Fit and Fill tags to provide a row.

Fit

The fit tag only takes up as much space as its bounds provide.

Fill

The fill tag takes up all the space available to it. For example, if you have a Fill tag next to a Fit tag, the Fill tag will take up the rest of the space. Adjacent Fill tags split the difference and form an equidistant grid.

Markdown Tag

Markdown (Base)

The Markdown tag is used to add inline markdown to your slide. You can provide markdown source via the source prop, or as children. You can also provide a custom mdast configuration via the mdastConfig prop.

Markdown generated tags aren't prop configurable, and instead render with your theme defaults.

Name	PropType	Description
source	PropTypes.string	Markdown source

Magic Tag

Magic

> NOTE: The Magic tag uses the Web Animations API. If you use the Magic tag and want it to work places other than Chrome, you will need to include the polyfill https://github.com/web-animations/web-animations-js

The Magic Tag is a new experimental feature that attempts to recreate Magic Move behavior that slide authors might be accustomed to coming from Keynote. It wraps slides, and transitions between positional values for child elements. This means that if you have two similar strings, we will transition common characters to their new positions. This does not transition on non positional values such as slide background color or font size.

Using Magic is pretty simple, you just wrap your slides with it, and it transitions between them:

  First Heading
  Second Heading

Transitioning between similar states will vary based upon the input content. It will look better when there are more common elements. An upcoming patch will allow for custom keys, which will provide greater control over which elements are identified as common for reuse.

Until then, feedback is very welcome, as this is a non-trivial feature and we anticipate iterating on the behind the scenes mechanics of how it works, so that we can accommodate most use cases.

Element Tags

The element tags are the bread and butter of your slide content. Most of these tags derive their props from the Base class, but the ones that have special options will have them listed:

Appear

This tag does not extend from Base. It's special. Wrapping elements in the appear tag makes them appear/disappear in order in response to navigation.

Name	PropType	Description
order	PropTypes.number	An optional integer starting at 1 for the presentation order of the Appear tags within a slide. If a slide contains ordered and unordered Appear tags, the unordered will show first.

BlockQuote, Quote and Cite (Base)

These tags create a styled blockquote. Use them as follows:

<blockquote>
  Ken Wheeler is amazing
  <cite>Everyone</cite>
</blockquote>

CodePane (Base)

This tag displays a styled, highlighted code preview. I prefer putting my code samples in external .example files and requiring them using raw-loader as shown in the demo. Here are the props:

Name	PropType	Description
lang	PropTypes.string	Prism compatible language name. i.e: 'javascript'
source	PropTypes.string	String of code to be shown

If you want to change the theme used here, you can include a prism theme in index.html via a script tag. CodePane and Playground both use the prism library under the hood, which has several themes that are available to include.

Code (Base)

A simple tag for wrapping inline text that you want lightly styled in a monospace font.

Component Playground

This tag displays a two-pane view with a ES6 source code editor on the right and a preview pane on the left for showing off custom React components. React and render are supplied as variables. To render a component call render with some JSX code. Any console output will be forwarded to the main console in the browser.

For more information on the playground read the docs over at react-live.

Name	PropType	Description
code	PropTypes.string	The code block you want to initially supply to the component playground. If none is supplied a demo component will be displayed.
previewBackgroundColor	PropTypes.string	The background color you want for the preview pane. Defaults to #fff.
theme	PropTypes.string	Accepts light or dark for the source editor's syntax highlighting. Defaults to light.
scope	PropTypes.object	Defines any outside modules or components to expose to the playground. React, Component, and render are supplied for you.

Example code blocks:

const Button = ({ title }) =&gt; (<button type="button">{ title }</button>);
render(<button title="My Button">);

class View extends React.Component {
  componentDidMount() {
    console.log("Hello");
  }

  render() {
    return (<div>My View</div>);
  }
}
render(</button>