At the University of Southern California's Norris Medical Library, seminars on World Wide Web topics are given to faculty, staff, students, and to community health care providers at remote sites. The presentations have been given using presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint, while running Netscape in the background, switching between the two programs as needed. However, this setup requires a large amount of computer memory and, since both programs are graphically intensive, simultaneous use often alters the coloration of the slides or Web pages. This paper explains how to develop Web-based slides using HTML templates. The resulting product makes Web presentations more seamless, is platform independent, and completely portable. In addition, the use of HTML templates makes building a Web based presentation simple and fast. The paper provides a sample HTML template, and describes: using graphical elements; using the color cube to ensure the correct colors will be displayed in the final product; style considerations for Web-based presentations; drawbacks to using Web-based slide presentations; and future enhancements to improve Web presentations. As improvements are made to the traditional presentation software packages and to Web site management tools, the need to creates slides from scratch will be obsolete. (SWC)