9 34 2006-03-26T15:17:12-05:00 $Date: 2006-03-26 16:22:39 -0500 (Sun, 26 Mar 2006) $ NormanWalsh 2006Norman Walsh Improve your presentation experience with dual screen mode. Abraham Lincoln 'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. Although already well established in the twentieth century, DITA 2006 was the first time I'd ever used “dual screen” mode to give a presentation. In dual screen mode, you get two connected but independent desktops. With a laptop, that means you can project one desktop while viewing another on your LCD panel. I can't imagine giving presentations any other way again! It took a little fiddling to get dual screen mode working on my laptop, and it's not very useful “day to day” because I like to be able to take my laptop out of my office and continue working without worrying about “losing windows” on what would be the invisible second screenMac and Windows users may be able to gloat a little bit here about more dynamic configuration. I can toggle dual screen mode without rebooting, but not without logging out and back in.. But in a presentation setting, being able to have an active desktop with notes and other props while projecting something else was really handy. I'll probably wind up working on some improvements to the Slides document type to make generation of the “real” and “notes” views easier. And it'd be nice to have some Javascript to drive the “slide view” browser without having to mouse over to it. Another advantage over simply “cloning” your LCD is that you can have two different resolutions. So I got to read my notes, etc., on my normal 1600x1200 desktop while projecting slides at 1024x768. If you give presentations and you haven't tried dual screen mode, I highly recommend it!