This is a bit of an odd answer, even in a question that expects odd answers. That is because it sounds so normal, yet I have Googled for it and almost no one advocates for it. They do maybe advocate for it in terms of design, but I mean in making actual static websites.
Enter Google Slides: the product for your uncle Joe and aunt Lysa to create their own websites without knowing how to code!
I even have an example website for you that I made as it is a project that I'm working on in my free time. I already remade the website in actual HTML/CSS/JS but I was simply curious how well Google Slides would work. IMO, it has a thing or two over Sketch (such as displaying GIFs, having links) since I made the actual layout with Sketch, and then redid everything with Google Slides to do a side by side comparison (I went too far with this :P).
There are a few things to consider:
1. Every page needs to be made in its own slide show as you cannot have different document sizes.
2. You will be stuck with a slide viewer, but I figured for the industrious fellow, you could simply inject some JavaScript that disables that whole viewer when you iframe your Google Slides website.
3. There are zooming issues because the pages are of different document sizes.
4. The fact that you need to define document sizes is noteworthy in itself.
So yea, not super duper practical, unless you aren't a web designer and simply want a simple profile page online, but definitely weird :D
Wow, this idea brings me back to one of the moments that first inspired me to start down the path of web development. In 2007 I took a semester off and got a job as a teaching assistant for a special education classroom and was 1:1 with a child that LOVED computers but would get overwhelmed by the information density of your typical website - too many decisions would frustrate him.
One week, we were learning about farms which I was really excited for because his love for the computer was matched only by his obsession with animals. Sadly, his outbursts would require me to separate him from the group time where we would show them pictures of animals and learn about their sounds, functions, etc. This made me think of creating and interactive PowerPoint where I made a slide with options for “petting zoo”, “animals with jobs”, “wild cats”, etc. each choice would lead to a new slide with a set of photos, icons that played their sounds, and even tried creating a set of quizzes where I recorded an animal sound and he had to select a photo that matched.
I worked until 3 AM making this PowerPoint and was deliriously tired the next day, but man the joy this kid experienced while he got to play on the computer AND learn about animals without getting worked up over a multitude of decisions sparked something in me that made me decide I wanted to do something with IT.
Your idea really hit home for me and helped me remember one of the reasons I do what I do today - frontend and app development. Lowering boundaries and making technological concepts more accessible can inspire unexpected interest and adoption.
Note that there is a, less known, google site to make simple website with no coding skills and an interface similar to google slides : https://sites.google.com/new
I'm not old enough to have known Hypercard, though my thesis very adjacently touches on it (kind of, not really, but it talks about Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson and hyperlinked text and how it devolved -- according to Nelson -- to the www).
So it's really cool to see hyper card for real this time!
Oh! Of course! I presume you can also inject JS into Google Slides itself. Hmm... I'll see if I can make a simple game then, when I'm bored again.
That reminds me about one other use for the slides editor like power points and google slides: creating posters. It's much easier and faster for an inexperienced person to create a poster from scratch (for your paper, conference talks, etc) with those slides editor than using vector graphic editor like inkscape or coreldraw.
It's probably already obvious for people who regularly uses google slides / keynote / powerpoint, but for me who very rarely use them (but often use various graphic editors) it's quite a revelation.
Similar idea: I‘ve heard that Keynote is (was) popular as a protyping tool inside apple.
I think It‘s actually the best tool do this on the iPad right now. At first the links seem limited because you link to slide numbers, but they actually update when you move things around. Magic Move is beyond what any design/prototyping tool can do in terms of zero effort animation (though figma launched somehtng like this yesterday?).
Hey, I had the same idea long ago: creating a website-like functioning slide show. There was no Google Slides back then so I used Powerpoint and I had no way of putting the "website" on internet.
My wife was actually going to do this for a website. She is a teacher and wanted a small site for her classroom so that the kids and parents could keep up to date with the goings on in the classroom and she wanted to use Google Slides for this since she has used it for work before. I was shocked and was trying to talk her out of it. At the end of the day, she decided the site wasn't necessary or worth the effort so nothing came of it but I couldn't believe she thought to use Google Slides for that.
She wanted to create the site the day before parent orientation. She ended up not doing the site because she figured it wasn't worth the time to make something that the parents wouldn't even visit as the parents of her students are mostly not involved in their children's education.
My main argument against using Google Slides is the URL was not going to be easy to remember when telling parents. I pointed her to things like wordpress or wix that would allow her to have a free account but also would allow her to have a URL that would be easy to communicate. She didn't want to spend any money on a domain name either.
Enter Google Slides: the product for your uncle Joe and aunt Lysa to create their own websites without knowing how to code!
I even have an example website for you that I made as it is a project that I'm working on in my free time. I already remade the website in actual HTML/CSS/JS but I was simply curious how well Google Slides would work. IMO, it has a thing or two over Sketch (such as displaying GIFs, having links) since I made the actual layout with Sketch, and then redid everything with Google Slides to do a side by side comparison (I went too far with this :P).
There are a few things to consider:
1. Every page needs to be made in its own slide show as you cannot have different document sizes.
2. You will be stuck with a slide viewer, but I figured for the industrious fellow, you could simply inject some JavaScript that disables that whole viewer when you iframe your Google Slides website.
3. There are zooming issues because the pages are of different document sizes.
4. The fact that you need to define document sizes is noteworthy in itself.
So yea, not super duper practical, unless you aren't a web designer and simply want a simple profile page online, but definitely weird :D
Example website / project that I'm working on (and recreated to the best of my abilities in Google Slides for fun): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRxqg4SNv1Sl...