Download the single file below and open it in any modern browser — it's the document, the viewer and the editor in one. Shipped files self-update through the signed release channel.
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LaTeX maths in any text box, rendered as MathML. Type
$E=mc^2$and it
renders as a formula —$$…$$for a display equation on its own line. The
document stores exactly what you typed, so a deck with maths still opens in
an older copy of Bento: you'll see the plain$E=mc^2$rather than a broken
slide. -
Symbol-level formula morphing. On a morph transition, a term that
crosses the equals sign is seen to travel there instead of the whole
formula crossfading. Give the element the same id on both slides and$a + b = c$becomes$a = c - b$with thebmoving across. The starter deck
demonstrates it. -
Twenty-one installable language packs, each hash-signed. The globe menu
gains Manage languages… — install a language from the release channel or
remove one you don't need. Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Russian,
Ukrainian, Vietnamese and fourteen others are available without adding a
byte to files that don't use them. Each pack's fingerprint is signed
alongside the release, so installing a language is verified exactly like an
update.Your choice lives in the browser, never in the document — a deck written in
Tokyo opens in French chrome for a French reader, and the deck itself is
unchanged either way. -
The editor is usable at 402px — the topbar folds instead of overflowing.
The toolbar used to need about 680px of a 402px screen: it ran off the edge,
took the Save button with it, and because nothing clipped it, swiping the
toolbar dragged the whole canvas sideways. On a phone it now folds into two
menus — ＋ for inserting and ⋯ for everything occasional — leaving slides,
insert, undo, format, save and more, at proper touch size. The side panels
slide over the canvas instead of squeezing it, so the slide you're editing
is no longer the smallest thing on screen. Nothing changes on a laptop.Known gap: the save-as menu (copy, new deck, template, password) doesn't fit
on a phone yet and is unreachable there for now. -
Decks carry a page-one preview, so Finder and Files thumbnail them
properly. Every Bento file used to thumbnail as the same dark box, because
thumbnails are drawn without running a page's JavaScript and, until Bento
boots, every deck genuinely is the same bytes plus the same boot splash.
Saving now writes a still picture of page one into the file, which is what
those previews draw instead — so a folder of decks is finally something you
can read. It costs about 14 KB on a typical deck (under 2% of the file),
never more than 64 KB: a page with a big photograph keeps its layout and its
words and drops the photograph rather than carrying it twice. Nothing
changes when you open a deck normally — the picture is written for software
that can't run the file, and is never shown to a reader.A password-protected deck gets no preview at all. A readable picture of
the title page sitting next to the encrypted document would give away exactly
what the password is there to protect, so encrypted decks keep the plain dark
thumbnail — and a deck that had a preview loses it the moment you set a
password. -
Deck-level toggles for slide number, progress bar and corner arrows.
They live in a new Slideshow section of the slide panel. They're
deck-wide and travel in the file, so a deck you hand to someone else
presents the way you designed it. -
Release notes ride in the signed manifest, shown before and after
updating. When an update is available the About dialog now lists the
headlines from that release inline, instead of only a version number and a
link off to GitHub — and because they travel in the signed manifest, they
can't be tampered with. After the update lands and you reload, Bento says
once which version you're now on, with a link to the full notes. It only
says it if you actually upgraded: someone opening a deck you sent them never
sees it. -
A Screen Wake Lock is held for the length of a presentation. Phones and
laptops used to dim and lock partway through a talk if you left a slide up
for a couple of minutes. Bento now holds the screen on for the length of the
show and lets go when you exit — and takes the lock again if you switch away
and come back. -
Honest save messaging where the File System Access API is missing. Those
browsers (and every browser on iPhone and iPad) can't rewrite a file in
place — Bento hands back an updated copy instead. The editor used to say the
opposite in its tooltips and only admit it in a passing message after the
first save. It now says what will actually happen before any work is at
stake, once per browser, and the Save button describes the real behaviour.Those browsers also now show that your work is being kept safe. Bento has
always snapshotted the deck into the browser as you edit and offered it back
when you reopen, but on Safari and Firefox nothing ever said so — the only
signal was an amber dot that never cleared. It now reports when it last
backed up, while still showing the file itself as out of date, because it is.
(A password-protected deck is never snapshotted, so it stays quiet rather
than promise a safety net it doesn't have.) -
The update save dialog pre-fills the open file's own name. It offers the
name of the deck you have open rather than one derived from its title — so a
file calledQ3-board.bento.htmlno longer offers to save itself as
Q3_Board_Review.bento.html. The backup written alongside an in-place
update follows the same name. Where the save dialog opens is set by the
browser and can't be pointed at a folder by the page, but it now remembers
the last place you saved, so the second update onwards starts in the right
directory. -
The starter deck is called “Bento Slides Showcase” again. The lowercase
rebrand swept the deck's own title along with the app's, but a deck title is
a document name — it shows in the window title and becomes the suggested
filename — so it reads better in title case. Thebento/slideswordmark is
unchanged. -
Charts honour axis and legend text styles, and measure CJK correctly.
The lightweight chart renderer applies configured font sizes and weights to
axis labels and legends, respects legend spacing and placement, and measures
CJK legend text correctly so localized series names no longer overlap. -
Fix: a formula you opened but didn't change now redraws when you finish.
Editing a formula (or a{{page}}-style field) shows its raw source; leaving
without typing anything used to leave that source on the slide until
something else happened to repaint. -
Fix: Reveal's scroll view no longer activates below 435px. Below about
435px wide, the presentation was quietly switching to a scrolling reading
layout instead of a slideshow — so swipe navigation stopped working and
hidden interactive slides became scrollable content. -
Fix: saves no longer accumulate an uncompressed copy of the stylesheet.
Each save wrote a fresh, uncompressed copy of the app's stylesheet into the
file, which the next save then copied again — a deck saved ten times carried
ten of them and had put on a megabyte for nothing. The stylesheet belongs in
the compressed runtime payload, where it takes 27 KB and is written exactly
once; a file that already accumulated copies drops all of them the next time
you save it. -
Fix: the cartesian grid reserves room for the legend's real height.
Charts that don't set their own margins now leave room for the legend at
whatever size it's set to, instead of assuming the default one. -
Fix: starter-deck axis labels back above the WCAG AA contrast floor.
They were being drawn half-transparent against a dark panel. -
Fix: the About dialog's update section no longer overlaps the controls
below. Once an update was found, the extra heading and buttons collapsed
into a sliver and drew on top of the auto-check and offline switches. It now
takes the room it needs and the dialog scrolls.