using Jekyll to generate HTML-based slideshow presentations from Markdown source?

Question

I want to create slick HTML-based slideshows to use for giving presentations. I've found a couple that I like, such as scrolldeck.js.

Basically it's a static site within a folder, i.e. a single index.html page with some JavaScript files and some CSS files.

The way it works is that the index.html document contains scaffolding that you can fill in with your own slide content:

<div class="slide" id="what1">
<H1>Headline Goes Here</H1>
<p>This is where the <strong>content</strong> of the slide would go.</p> 
</DIV>

It would be cool to be able to create slideshows from Markdown-formatted text, rather than writing in HTML.

1. I heard that maybe Jekyll could do this. So far all the Jekyll documentation I've seen has been confusing and complex. Is there a tutorial on how to take my existing index.html file and put Jekyll fill-in-the-blanks markup so that it could grab my Markdown-formatted text content and automatically generate my HTML slideshow from it?
2. Is there a better way to do this than Jekyll?
3. Are there other HTML-based slideshows that already have the ability to draw from Markdown source? (Pandoc can convert from Markdown to Slidy, but the problem with Slidy is that it has no visible navigation, and I'd like the viewer to be able to see where they are in the "user flow" and jump around if desired.)

Answer 1

Pandoc can convert to several HTML slides how formats, including reveal.js, which includes visible navigation. Reveal.js also has built in support for markdown. Slideshow-s9 is a ruby gem that supports markdown conversion to a wide variety of popular HTML sildeshow formats.