Displaying imported slides as Images

Background

Linked to SWIK-1098

Uploading PPTX as image has been proposed as away of reducing the effort of adding content when importing content ( https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B52DCt0vMcvaZDcxWm9GMVduRXc). Currently the overhead of correcting slides is putting trial participants off adding content. Some are also adding it as an image of the slide. 

If images of imported slides are created then we could offer a number of functions:

1. Add a checking stage to the import process. By comparing the imported slide to an image image of the original users can see what their deck will look like and decide whether to continue with the import. We can use this step to advise users of actions they can take on their original file to improve the import process. Images would not need to be saved after import.
   
   
2. Display image of slide after import but allow users to edit html content underneath. This would allow users to always see a good import but as soon as they edit the slides they would loose the image version. This would require images of the slides to be stored after import. Also, there are considerable accessibility issues with this approach as the underlying html would need to be accessible to assistive technologies and if a user needed to personalise a slide then they would have to use the HTML view

Some additional thoughts:

• we are being compared to services such as SlideShare that create an image of a slide or speakerdeck.com which uses PDFs. Therefore user's expectations are high.
• One of the primary goals of the project is to gather content so making the import process as simple as possible is important as is the perceived quality of the import.
• Finding a library to convert PPTX slides to images is difficult as this may require using MS Office libraries to produce an image that is accurate enough.

Recommendation:

If we can find a simple solution for producing images of slides on import then we should explore displaying a preview/diff view to deck owners during the import process.

Action items