Presentation and Handout Viewers
Available Online Formats
Presentations and handouts from Sirius conferences are available online.
Handouts are always available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF).
Presentations are usually available as PowerPoint shows, but may also be available
in Lotus Freelance format.
Inidividual foils from presentations are also available in in a format that can be directly
rendered by browsers.
Adobe PDF Viewer
Adobe makes free PDF viewers available for a variety of platforms.
Click the graphic below for further assistance.
Viewers for Microsoft PowerPoint
This is the most widely-supported format for presentations and we are
striving to always include PowerPoint versions of a presentation, even if
the presentation was authored by a different package.
The following links may be used to get viewers appropriate for your platform:
Lotus FreeLance Viewers
While Lotus FreeLance is a great tool for preparing presentations, IBM has apparently thrown in
the towel as far as keeping the product current.
A viewer is only available for Windows platforms, and its “installation” is a mess.
Manual intervention is required to set it to automatically open a presentation linked from an HTML page.
These instructions are intended for the non-squeemish, others may want to stick to viewing the
presentations in PowerPoint format.
The following instructions assume that you did not install the pathetically useless and destructive
“Lotus Web Screen Show Player 1.0”.
If you have this viewer (which Lotus used to recommend), you will experience difficulties
with Internet Explorer versions beyond 5.5.
If your browser displays a tiny graphic containing a red square, a green circle and a blue triangle
when you click on a link for a FreeLance presentation, you will first need to follow the
instructions to remove version 1.0 of the Screen Show Player.
- Download MOBILESS.EXE.
Save the file to your desktop and launch it to install the Mobile Screen Show Player Version 1.1.
Once installed, the player can be used to open and view FreeLance presentations,
but you will need to intervene if you want it to auto-launch.
- Set the Mobile Screen Show Player for automatically displaying FreeLance presentations (.PRZ file type).
Select a hypertext link for a Lotus FreeLance presentation.
You can find one on the SUG 2004 Presentations page.
- The browser may ask whether you want to open in place or save to disk a file with a type of ".prz".
Select open in place and un-check "always ask".
- Next you will be prompted for the "open with" program.
Select "Lotus Mobile Screen Show Player EXE" and check the "always use" box.
You should be set.
Removing Version 1.0 of the Lotus Web Screen Show Player
Because of the way this player installs itself, a Windows uinstall does not remove
all traces of the player.
Because this player is not compatible with IE Version 6, this causes the browser to
display an error icon, even after the Web Show Player has been uninstalled.
You need a two-step process to disinfect your machine.
- Use the "Add/Remove Programs" service in the Control Panel to remove
the "Lotus Web Screen Show Player 1.0".
Respond yes to the do you really want to.
Respond "yes to all" for the shared file removal prompts.
- Clean up some registry leftovers that the uninstall does not remove.
There are two plugin keys that direct IE to use an old Netscape plugin that no longer works.
Thank you IBM, may I have another?
To do this you need to use the regedit tool:
- Use Start->Run and enter regedit.
- Expand the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" branch in the left pane.
- Expand the "Software" branch.
- Expand the "Microsoft" branch.
- Expand the "Internet Explorer" branch.
- Expand the "Plugins" branch.
- Expand the "Extension" branch.
- Delete the ".prz" key.
This is accomplished by selecting the folder and striking the "delete" key.
Respond yes to the do you really want to prompt.
- Expand the "MIME" branch (under plugins).
- Delete the "application/freelance" key, also by selecting its
folder, striking the "delete" key and replying yes to the do you really want to prompt.
Congratulations, you have deleted the defunct Web Screen Show Player Version 1.
