Presentations sometimes feel like the bane of the business community. They are notoriously difficult to prepare, and delivering a presentation to a packed room is a challenge in itself. Even after you've got the content down, there remains the matter of actually creating something you can show other people while you talk. Impress.JS is a free JavaScript library that skilled web developers can use to create presentations that run in a browser and look nothing like PowerPoint. Instead of moving through slides, you fly over a large map of concepts, zooming and shifting between them.

The "big poster" format is not a completely new invention: Commercial service Prezi bills itself "The Zooming Presentation Editor," and lets users create presentations that look similar to this, without having to code anything. But Prezi is a hosted solution, and it is Flash-based. If you don't like those two restrictions--and you're skilled with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript--Impress.js can help you create some truly fantastic presentations.

Even more than a presentation tool, Impress.js serves as a showcase for how far browsers have come: It uses CSS 3D transforms, custom data elements (something HTML 5 makes possible), and other cutting-edge browser capabilities. Recent Chrome and Firefox versions support these features, but Internet Explorer and Opera do not. Impress.js was never meant to work equally well across all browsers and computers: Creator Bartek Szopka recommends using Impress.js as a presentation tool and not a tool for creating and publishing websites, because, in his words, "When you are building a presentation for yourself you know exactly on which browser, OS, and hardware it will be presented. You can fully test it before going on stage."

Impress.js is aimed at a narrow niche, but if you've got what it takes (or can hire a developer who does), it can be used to create truly memorable, unique presentations.

Note: The Download Now button takes you to the developer's website, where you can obtain the latest version of Impress.js.

--Erez Zukerman