Presenting Live
The Show turns your authored scenes into a live presentation. The audience sees a clean full-screen diagram; you drive from a presenter cockpit with speaker notes, scene list, and timers on your laptop screen.
Launching the Show
From anywhere in the editor:
- Show in the mode switch, or Present → Show from start — from the first scene of the first act.
- Present → Show from current scene — from where you are in Story, for rehearsing one part.
The editor window becomes the presenter cockpit. Press Esc to leave the show and return to the editor at the scene you stopped on.
The audience view
The audience window shows:
- The diagram, full-screen, with no UI chrome.
- The current scene's visibility and spotlight applied.
- All animations looping (flow, accent) or playing once on entry (reveal).
- Smooth transitions when the presenter advances.
- The presenter's live annotations, drawn on their cockpit, mirrored here.
- The camera easing to the scene's captured framing, if it has one.
- A small expono wordmark in a corner — the free pre-release's mark.
To open the audience window, click Open audience view in the cockpit header. A separate browser window opens — drag it to your projector or second screen. Press F inside it to fullscreen. The two windows stay in sync automatically; no internet connection required.
The presenter cockpit
The cockpit is designed to give you everything you need at a glance without looking away from your audience.
Cockpit layout
| Area | Content |
|---|---|
| Live mirror | The same view the audience sees — transitions and animations playing in real time. What you see here is what's on the projector. |
| Scene list (left column) | Live 16:9 thumbnails of all scenes in the current act. The active scene has an accent border. Click any thumbnail to jump non-linearly. |
| Speaker notes (right column) | Your notes for the current scene, in a large readable font. |
| Timing panel | Show timer + per-scene timer. Present and Rehearse modes (see below). |
| Controls | Act selector · Back / Advance · Camera reset · the annotation tools and the laser. |
Navigating scenes
| Action | Method |
|---|---|
| Next stop | → ↓ Space or PgDn — a presentation clicker sends these |
| Previous stop | ← ↑ or PgUp |
| Back to where you jumped from | ⌫ — after a jump from the scene list or the overview map |
| Jump to any scene | Click its thumbnail in the scene list |
| Switch acts | Use the act selector dropdown in the cockpit header |
Advancing past the last scene of an act goes on to the first scene of the next.
Live camera and zoom
During the Show you can pan and zoom the audience view freely — useful for zooming into a detail mid-scene or panning across a wide diagram. The audience window mirrors every camera movement in real time.
- Pan: drag the live mirror in the cockpit (or use middle-mouse).
- Zoom: scroll wheel over the mirror.
- Reset camera: back to the scene's captured framing, or Z to pull back to the whole diagram.
- M shows the audience an overview map of the whole diagram with the current view marked on it.
Live annotations
Draw scratch annotations live — they appear on both the cockpit mirror and the audience window.
The annotation toolbar in the cockpit provides: arrow, box, oval, highlighter, and laser pointer. Choose a color from the color picker beside the tools.
Live annotations are temporary — they clear automatically on scene advance. They are never saved back to the project file. To save annotations permanently, use Scene annotations in Story mode.
Timing and pacing
The timing panel (top-right of the cockpit) shows:
- Show timer — total elapsed time since the Show started.
- Scene timer — how long you've been on the current scene.
Present mode
If the scene has a Hold duration set, the scene timer counts down from that value. Enable Auto-advance to move automatically to the next scene when the countdown reaches zero.
Rehearse mode
In Rehearse mode the scene timer counts up. When you stop the rehearsal, the time spent on each scene is saved back as that scene's Hold duration — so you can turn a practice run into your actual target timings with one click.
Presentation modes
| Mode | Key | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Black screen | B | Audience view goes black — useful when you want the audience's attention without showing the diagram. |
| White screen | W | Audience view goes white — same as black but for bright rooms. |
| Whole diagram | Z | Pull the camera back to everything, then return. |
| Overview map | M | Show the audience where the current view sits in the whole. |
| Fullscreen | F | Toggle fullscreen on the audience window. |
Recording
Recording a narrated take from the cockpit, and rendering the talk to video, are part of the paid tier. The free pre-release presents live, and exports the talk as a PDF handout.
Returning to the editor
- Click From here in the ribbon to exit the Show and return to Story mode at the current scene — ready to make edits and go back in.
- Or click Stage in the mode toggle to return to diagram editing.