Did you explore client-side for the presentation, and just do the collaborative part use a backend? Your backend doesn't really need to know whats on the screen to draw, nor to sync the slides, in my unverified opinion.
In a previous position, we used Adobe Connect a lot for online meetings, and the normal way of sharing presentations was to upload them to the room and control the presentation from there.
Webex has this as well, but I find that most people don't bother and just share their screen.
The actual idea came to me back in University when I was presenting projects where I worked with other students. This way students can share a presentation only they can control.
In the past I have liked marp (https://marp.app/) for technical slides as you write in markdown, can use version control, etc. Powerpoint always felt odd as a developer.
To share public slides I've published to GitHub pages (https://github.com/robalexdev/marp-to-pages). I've seen professors use it for all their slides. But that doesn't synchronize slides, last I checked.
Interesting Idea for engagement. Although I think slides suck in general and often used for one way communication, especially suck for Software Development. A doc is much more preferable and a lot of collaborative docs like Google Doc exist.
Just a datapoint but Microsoft Teams (most commonly paired with users of Powerpoint) has an option to share and present just a slide deck where viewers can tag along the presenter or jump forward and back to view the rest of the deck independently from presenter.
But in quite a few cases presenter would want to control when information is presented/revealed to audience.
The (MS Teams) feature is very cool and potentially useful, but: it only works on certain types of meetings/calls, and the way it’s implemented, people get lost, because they start playing with their slides, and then it’s not clear they can press the “Live” button to sync up again, so then they end up interrupting the speaker to say they are lost, or multiple people will say they are not clear where they are…
“If you don't want people to be able to independently navigate through a PowerPoint file you're sharing, select Private view Hide objects button in the meeting controls.”
I do want people to independently navigate. But also, I'd like to bring them back to the current slide, or somehow highlighting the current slide, essentially making it easy for viewers not to get lost
Fwiw, having taught online for well over a decade, I keep (kept?) trying to put people on to the marvel of a virtual machine for this (minus the sharing this offers, I suppose)
Just have a VM that you tell Zoom or whatnot is the "window to present" Now you can do anything, slides and more, and also that thing can be the only publicly seen thing, your computer stays private.
Side comment: i guess this is the october 2026 defaut font for Claude? (Vibe coded some landing pages prototypes very recently, always came with this exact fonts)
antonly | 5 hours ago
[OP] denismenace | 5 hours ago
I wanted to first know if people would like something like this.
kinduff | 4 hours ago
nico | 3 hours ago
jayknight | 5 hours ago
Webex has this as well, but I find that most people don't bother and just share their screen.
sublinear | 5 hours ago
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/present-from-...
[OP] denismenace | 3 hours ago
8organicbits | 4 hours ago
In the past I have liked marp (https://marp.app/) for technical slides as you write in markdown, can use version control, etc. Powerpoint always felt odd as a developer.
To share public slides I've published to GitHub pages (https://github.com/robalexdev/marp-to-pages). I've seen professors use it for all their slides. But that doesn't synchronize slides, last I checked.
NicuCalcea | 3 hours ago
0: https://revealjs.com/multiplex/
1: https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/revealjs/
conqrr | 4 hours ago
htrp | 3 hours ago
[OP] denismenace | 3 hours ago
I wanted to see if anybody wants this too, and hopefully develop it into a business.
albert_e | 3 hours ago
But in quite a few cases presenter would want to control when information is presented/revealed to audience.
[OP] denismenace | 3 hours ago
nico | 3 hours ago
[OP] denismenace | 2 hours ago
hughlilly | 37 minutes ago
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/teams/meetings/share-sli...
nico | 25 minutes ago
bbstats | 3 hours ago
jrm4 | 3 hours ago
Just have a VM that you tell Zoom or whatnot is the "window to present" Now you can do anything, slides and more, and also that thing can be the only publicly seen thing, your computer stays private.
rmnclmnt | 21 minutes ago