ATOC 4815/5815

Quick Start with Quarto Presentations

Will Chapman

CU Boulder ATOC

Spring 2026

Reminders

Final Project Presentations: April 27

• Late work accepted through April 23
• FCQ’s are open
• Check your Canvas grade

Office Hours:

Will: Tu 11:15-12:15p Th 9-10a Aerospace Cafe

Aiden: M / W 3:30-4:30p DUAN D319

These course slides were built with Quarto.

Today you will build one from scratch in about 10 minutes.

Quick reminders. Use the second column to connect Quarto to something concrete they already know — these very slides. It makes Quarto feel real and achievable, not abstract.

Quick Start with Quarto

If you follow this presentation

• You will have a .qmd file on your machine
• You will run one command and get a working HTML presentation
• You will know the edit -> render -> view loop

Step 0: Install Quarto

Two ways to install

Option A — conda (easiest if you already have conda):

conda install -c conda-forge quarto

Option B — direct download:

Go to quarto.org/docs/get-started and run the installer for your OS.

Either way, verify it worked:

quarto --version

You should see something like 1.5.57. If you do, you are ready.

Most students in this course already have conda — lead with Option A. Option B is the fallback for anyone not using conda. Once everyone has a version number, move on.

Give them 2 minutes to download and install. Circulate and help anyone who gets stuck. The most common issue is PATH — if quarto –version fails after install, they may need to restart their terminal. Once everyone sees a version number, move on.

What Is Quarto?

A plain text file that becomes slides

You write a .qmd file:

---
title: "My Talk"
format: revealjs
---

# Hello

This is my first slide.

You get a browser-openable HTML presentation with navigation, a theme, and keyboard shortcuts.

Just a text file.

The key mental model: Quarto is a compiler. You write plain text, it produces a polished presentation. The source file opens in any text editor. No proprietary format, no binary blobs.

Two things you need to know

---                         ← front matter starts
title: "My Talk"
format: revealjs
---                         ← front matter ends

# First slide               ← a # heading starts a new slide

## Second slide             ← ## also starts a new slide

Front matter — the block between --- lines — tells Quarto what kind of output to make.

Headings — # and ## — divide your file into slides.

That is all you need to write your first deck.

Two concepts only. They do not need to know the word “YAML” — just call it “the stuff at the top between the dashes.” Keep this slide short — the goal is to get to the live example as fast as possible.

Your First Slide Deck

The smallest useful example

Create a new file called slides.qmd and paste this in exactly:

---
title: "My First Quarto Presentation"
format: revealjs
---

# Hello

This is my first slide.

## Second slide

- one
- two
- three

That is a complete, working presentation.

Walk through it line by line. Title in front matter becomes the title slide. The # heading becomes slide one, the ## heading becomes slide two, the bullets are just a markdown list. Emphasize: this is the whole file. There is nothing missing.

Rendering Slides

Run this

quarto render slides.qmd

Quarto reads slides.qmd and writes slides.html in the same folder.

Open slides.html in any browser. You have a presentation.

That is the whole workflow

Write .qmd -> run quarto render -> open .html.

This is the most important slide. Say the command out loud. Watch them run it. Wait for everyone to see slides.html open in a browser before moving on. The most common error is running the command from the wrong folder — remind them to cd into the folder that contains slides.qmd first.

If something goes wrong

• “command not found” -> Quarto is not on your PATH. Re-run the installer, then restart your terminal.
• “No such file or directory” -> You are in the wrong folder. cd to wherever slides.qmd lives.
• Only a title slide, no other slides -> Check your headings — each # or ## must be on its own line with no leading spaces.
• Front matter error -> The --- lines must be exactly three dashes, on their own line, with nothing else on that line.

Read through these and pause after each one — someone in the room will recognize their problem. The PATH issue is the most common on Windows. The wrong-folder issue is the most common on Mac.

Edit -> Render -> View

This is the production loop

1. Open slides.qmd in your editor
2. Make a small change — add a bullet, rename a heading, add a new ## slide
3. Run quarto render slides.qmd again
4. Refresh the browser tab
5. See your change

Have them do this live right now. The goal is to break the mental barrier of “I do not know what will happen if I change something.” Encourage something tiny: just add one bullet to the second slide, then re-render.

Try it now

Add this to the bottom of your slides.qmd:

## Third slide

- Quarto is just a text file
- render turns it into HTML
- that is it

Then run:

quarto render slides.qmd

Refresh your browser. You now have three slides.

Live preview (optional quality-of-life upgrade)

quarto preview slides.qmd

Auto-refreshes the browser every time you save. Useful once you are past the first render.

Give them 2 minutes to add the slide and re-render. While they work, mention quarto preview as an upgrade they can switch to once things are working. Do not switch to it now — keep them on the render → refresh loop until everyone has succeeded at least once.

One Upgrade: Incremental Bullets

Bullets that appear one at a time

Wrap your list in ::: {.incremental}:

## Second slide

::: {.incremental}
- one
- two
- three
:::

Re-render. Click through the slide. Each bullet appears on a key press.

This is the one upgrade for today. It is purely markdown, requires no new concepts, and looks immediately satisfying. Keep it to this one feature — the goal is a feeling of “I can add things,” not an exhaustive tour.

What the ::: syntax means

::: {.incremental}    <- opens a block with the class "incremental"
- one
- two
- three
:::                  <- closes the block

::: is how you apply features to a block of content in Quarto.

You will see it again for: columns, callout boxes, speaker notes, image layouts. The pattern is always the same: ::: opens, ::: closes, and {.something} in the first line tells Quarto what to do.

Brief explanation so they are not scared when they see ::: again. One sentence is enough. Do not go further — this is the last new concept of the session.

Next Steps

You now know the essentials

• Create a .qmd with front matter and headings
• Run quarto render slides.qmd
• Open the .html in a browser
• Edit -> render -> view to iterate
• Wrap bullets in ::: {.incremental} to reveal them one at a time

Quick recap. Read through the list. This is what they actually did today — not a list of aspirational features.

When you are ready for more

Feature	What to add
Themes	theme: dark or theme: moon in front matter
Speaker notes	::: {.notes} block under any slide
Images	 on its own line
Code blocks	```python … ``` with #| eval: false to show without running
Two columns	:::: {.columns} containing two {.column width="50%"} blocks
Publish online	quarto publish gh-pages from your repo root

The “menu for later” slide. Read through it quickly. The message is: each feature is one small addition. Quarto does not need to be learned all at once. Everything on this table is findable at quarto.org in under five minutes.