Flash for PowerPoint
Flash relies on ActionScript to code all sorts of presentational and interactive effects. PowerPoint relies on a graphical user interface for creating a substantial range of presentational effects. Flash can be used as a presentation program in almost any situation in which you can use PowerPoint, but Flash is harder to use than PowerPoint and takes longer to learn. On the other hand, Flash can create fully interactive movies with much more functionality than PowerPoint offers.
To get started using Flash as a presentation tool, an effective approach is to try to capture PowerPoint's functionality and then exceed it. One easy way to do this is to create a Flash movie in which each frame has a stop action and each serves as would a slide in PowerPoint. The easiest way to build that presentation then would be to make a separate movie clip to hold the content of each frame. Another good practice would be to have navigation features that carry consistently from frame to frame. The sample Flash movie on this web page adopts both those techniques. Feel free to play with it online and to download its source file from the green link on the first frame. Explore the source file, including the movie clips, buttons, and so on, to see how each effect was accomplished. If you like, copy the code and modify it suit your own purposes.