Google Web Designer
google.com
google.com
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/ninja-...
It's the last point on the feature list page, but it's very telling that it's the first thing on the "Create New" screen.
https://support.google.com/webdesigner/answer/3261498?hl=en&...
Flash = almost dead
Dreamweaver = Zombie mod
Fireworks = Dead despite its powerfull features like jquerymobile skinning,project files as png files,games graphics, native app design, easily customizable through js.
Thank you Elop (who sold MM to Adobe ), thank you Adobe.
Flex with IntelliJ beats the javascript crap sauce anyone tries to push down my throat. The VM is extremely capable (yet terrible advertised and documented) and the language is superb and easily approachable.
If Adobe wasn't such a butt hole* at PR, we'd be in a different situation.
*:understand that Adobe shot itself in the foot in every possible way in the last 3 years.
As a former Flex developer, I must admit that Flex was the best thing that ever happened to web development, but unfortunately the Flash team wasn't strong enough to bring the runtime to mobile with enough quality. Building a RIA in Flex was so incredibly easy, and debugging was easy, and you really could use anything you wanted for a backend (I've used Perl, PHP, and Java). Bidirectional data binding, an excellent widget library, and a lot of help from the default IDE (custom build of Eclipse) allowed me to build software, full stack, with an engineering team of 1 on a weekly release cycle.
I've spent more time debugging HTML5/JS/CSS than building entire applications in Flex. The AdvancedDataGrid component alone was worth the price of admission.
I used to work for Macromedia but I knew the moment Flex was released they'd taken the wrong turn from complimenting web standards to trying to build their own proprietary platform on Flash. To the user it was only marginally better than Java applets.
Flex is still good for some $100-$120/hr consulting gigs on the side, mostly maintaining or changing something for a company who no longer employees a full time flex dev. Each year since Adobe "killed Flex" this hourly rate has gone up while the # of gigs has gone down. I would not, nor recommend, anyone start a Flex app today for a new project.
AngularJS is the closest thing to Flex that I've used, and only recently has tooling started to come close to what Flex had years ago.
JS/CSS is painful in comparison (esp when you consider large corps are still on IE6, 7, or 8), but still the right choice today for new RIAs. One can only hope the death of XP next year gets these corps to to do something...
For a web app (RIA) I would pick Flex or Silverlight any day over the whole HTML mess if they would only run properly in all browsers, desktop and mobile.
Agreed. I started doing a lot of projects in Fireworks because of how powerful and flexible it is. I actually stopped using Illustrator and Photoshop and was using Fireworks exclusively. I was really pissed when they killed it after the Creative Cloud.
Money grubbing scum.
You can create animations in Google Web Designer in two modes, Quick mode and Advanced mode.
In Quick mode, you build your animation scene by scene: you add a new view of the entire page, change the elements you want to animate, and, optionally, modify your transition times and easings.
For more complex animation, Advanced mode lets you individually animate each of the the elements, optionally modifying transition times and easing as well. Advanced mode also shows layers, which let you change where each element is in the stack of elements.
Check out more information on how to use the two different timeline modes in our help center: https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3181123?hl=en&r...
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
Our docs team has updated the help links.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
While Google hasn't announced pricing, it is probably safe to say it is going to be free. This is a business for us, so we charge $29.99. I don't like competing against free, but that just means we'll be continually pushed to provide that much more value!
Google's free offering is cross platform already.
And, I guess, most of the marketers, too.
You're actually discounting the entire world outside of SV right now?
The Microsoft world might also be used by large corporations, who also happen to have lots of money, with which you can buy things like software.
(There's also these other platforms based on *nix, but meh :-p)
|pushes button to delete nix|
Hey, where did 60% of my favorite website go? Oh, I'll just google how to undelete *nix... wait... crap!
That is an amazing thing to write on the internet.
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNS66CcUJ1o
SIDENOTE: If Adobe made linux-versions of all their stuff, combined with the already-existing linux versions of Maya and 3DSMax, I believe it would be very good for the digital-art industry.
No sir!
</sarcasm>
You really need to get some perspective about just how big the IT industry is outside of America.
People will use the enviroment where the tools run stable.
I'm guessing most (all?) the developers you know work in the US?
Mac OS is close to nonexistent in that area in the rest of the world.
Trying to sell an app competing against a free product from Google is already challenging enough, you should seriously consider the original advice and extend your tool to work on Windows as well.
> Mac OS is close to nonexistent in that area in the rest
> of the world.
I'm fortunate to be working for a consultancy company that just gives everyone a budget to buy their computer. Most people have a Macbook, with the odd exception that simply has a hatred for Apple or can't get used to it.
I would argue that development tools are much better for OSX. It's like Linux, but usable. A lot of commandline tools just work out of the box under OSX, where you have to go through hoops, hope there's a port, or install a bash emulator under Windows.
Of course, .NET developers will be using Windows.
And this is a two year old observation.
1) Big corporations don't like to overspend on PC hardware and can have great deals with anyone but Apple.
2) A company that work mostly on Windows platform (.Net, MSSql)
4) As weird as it sound some people might actually not like OSX.
On the other hand, I REALLY like the idea of an app and all its dependencies being installed all in one folder. That REALLY needs to happen everywhere. This would make migration between installs SO much easier, and would eliminate DLL hell (or shared library hell in the case of linux).
Just my 2cents
I also dont like the dock, i like to have a taskbar with the open windows on each of my monitors which is no problem in Windows and Linux. I dont like the Menubar stuck on the main monitor.
As a web developer i really like the unix base of OSX for different reaons though and i need to use some software for game dev (Unity3D) which isnt available on Linux.
But i thought about running Windows for game dev/office stuff and Linux in a VM for web development.
Oh yes. I wouldn't take a job if they offer Apple only choices.
That's what we call a filter bubble
Most of the people i know just use Windows (Belgium)
Prescriptivists.
In tech, things should be called by their name, or you risk future confusion.
I remember being a very little kid and buying shareware games with their "PC-Compatible" labels. At the time, that sticker actually meant "DOS Compatible", and being I just about 10 years old, I believed PCs and DOS were the only possible match, the same way my first MSX ran MSX-Basic and my cousin's Amstrad CPC ran CP/M. I didn't know it was even possible for machines to run different OSes. For that matter, I didn't even know what an OS was. I just knew different machines worked differently, the same way different TV sets worked differently.
So it's not just a matter of human language, it's a matter of intentionally confusing terms in favour of the market. Everybody knew there were other "walkmans" around. Not everybody knows there are other OSes.
Besides, that gives them a single competitor to fight against.
Yes, you'd drastically expand your potential client base – but end up with worse revenue and higher support costs per customer.
We've moved nearly all of our other videos to youtube, so if it really is our server you can click the "watch more" buttons on the main page to still get a feel for the app.
(I'm on a Mac, still I have Windows machines and know a huge amount of web-developers who abide by Windows)
If you create a truly brilliant ad which is targeted to the right audience and let them do something with your brand inside the ad for example people are more willing to view them in my opinion in stead of just forcing them the same old banner over and over again only with a different brand in them..
Do companies actually believe this? Flash is the easiest to remove of all ads.
"If you create a truly brilliant ad which is targeted to
the right audience and let them do something with your
brand inside the ad for example people are more willing
to view them in my opinion in stead of just forcing them
the same old banner over and over again only with a
different brand in them."
Unfortunately the industry was built on the grounds that the users had no choice, so the notion of good advertising I think will never come. Old men in stuffy suits don't change unless they go bankrupt.
But its Branded as Google Web Designer. :)
One of the other purposes of Advertisements are also to create impressions and Branding. You don't have to necessarily click every ad. :)
And with such visual tools ad making is very easy and reachable to all. A great project by Google. Kudos. With Visual tools like this we can interact with more depth. And lets not forget this is free too.
They might bring better ad-making experience overtime with built in ad-templates. All this will bring more Appealing ads.
And Eye catching ads serve as — Branding and Brand-remembering for Publishers, users notice them and remember(clicks not important in Branding)
#1 Wait, couldn't the ad designer you've been working so hard on actually be used by anyone to just make web pages?
#2 Well...I mean I guess so, but it wouldn't--
#1 Awesome! It's really a Google Web Designer! This can be a much bigger PR splash than just a nice tool for making ads! Gotta think outside the box. Generalize.
#2 OK, but the actual goal here is to make it easier to create ads, and the product's completely designed around--
#1 BAM! Name changed! Two minutes to create a whole new product. That MBA has paid for itself in spades!
More likely:
#1 "we need an ad builder tool"
#2 "OK, but it can do more than ads..."
#1 "Good one. Then it it will seem like we're giving back."
#2 "?"
#1 "Don't worry. Just make sure the focus of using the app will be ads. That will help our users the most, and provide the biggest impact with our limited resources."
I'd agree that it was not the original goal of HTML to develop full applications.
There seem to be a hidden agenda in everything Google does these days.
Our ambition while building Google Web Designer is that it be a general-purpose, awesome HTML5 content builder.
Hence the name Web Designer & not Ad Designer.
We aim to learn from our users, iterate & push quickly to reach our ultimate goal of being a kick- general purpose HTML5 builder!
It spit this out:
https://gist.github.com/JacksonGariety/6766626
(after struggling and realizing CMD+S wasn't saving my file)
I feel sorry for whoever was tasked with making this application.
HTML5 Twitter isn't a document. The 1 to 1 correspondence between the window object and the document object is all wrong. There should have been a 1 to 1 or 1 to many relationship between window and documents. When there is a 1 to many relationship the window object reflects only the semantics of apps and within it, there should be many documents, one for each tweet displayed by the HTML5 twitter app.
[0] http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit...
Calling it "Google Web Designer" was a terrible decision, but that's clearly not what the tool was meant for.
Google Web Designer is an advanced web application that's built with HTML5 which lets you design and build HTML5 advertisements and other web content using an integrated visual and code interface
Do you know how much code this is for a runtime and how many browser incompatibility issues this solves.
He probably does, to begin with. That you might disagree with him about how much code is warranted here does not make his comment unconstructive.
That sounds just condescending to me.
What is the problem with a < 4kb runtime and some browser hacks?
{\"type\":1,\"xoff\":0,\"yoff\":-1.4210854715202004e-14,\"strokeWidth\":1,\"strokeColor\":[0,0,0,1],\"fillColor\":[1,0,0,1],\"tlRadius\":0,\"trRadius\":0,\"blRadius\":0,\"brRadius\":0,\"width\":201,\"height\":104.00000000000003,\"strokeStyle\":\"Solid\",\"strokeMat\":null,\"fillMat\":null}
That could be better, to be sure. It's for some reason part of a JSON-encoded string inside a JS object instead of just a JS object (hence the hard-to-read escaped quotes). And the properties could use defaults to spare us "strokeMat: null" and such. But it's not horrible.
Edits: numerous and minor
Draw one rectangle. Save as rect1.
Draw a second rectangle. Save as rect2.
Show us the diff between rect1 and rect2.
This did actually make the world a better place insofar as the web got some HTML pages that would otherwise have been Word doc file downloads.
MS Word also produces much smaller HTML pages if you save your web page as "filtered HTML", sacrificing some Word functionality in the process. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/about-using-filt...
However, to do that, you would have to know the "filtered" option was there, and why you might want to use it. Which is probably not your average office drone.
So yes, Sir. Yes, really.
HTML generators like this (or MS Word, or Dreamweaver, you name it) unfortunately are not optimized to do just the job they are used for. A good example for that is the one gave by our fellow commenter above. It adds a lot of useless code because it is simpler to do it that way. In the times where every Kb/s used to count, load a HTML page with 3 times the size it should be was a real issue.
Also, MS Word to HTML was the worst thing I have ever seen in terms of compatibility for other browsers. That to me does not sound like making the world a better place, sorry.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3618...
This is like IE4/Netscape Communicator days all over again, except now with more than two dominant browsers...
"I was a web dev in the 90s and all I got was this lousy XMLHttpRequest object"
Meaning what? Google isn't directly involved with WebKit anymore and can't make them implement standards.
Microsoft and FrontPage did the exact same thing back in the days.
1. This tool can't produce cross-browser output
2. This tool includes some rendering engine-specific markup to solve cross-platform issues.
1 is unlikely and 2 is benign.
While editing a file, Google Web Designer uses -webkit prefixes. However, when you publish your content, the publish dialog allows you to specify additional vendor prefixes (or no prefixes) in the output so the content works in different browsers.
I hope this helps.
Thanks, Nivesh (Google Web Developer)
Google Web Designer (GWD) uses the WebKit HTML rendering engine inside the application's workspace and reports the styles that are actually applied to the content during editing.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
It would be nice if there was some options for stripping out the Ad specific javascript. But even at ~55k this is a pretty slimmed down codebase considering what it does. Swiffy, which converts flash files to HTML/javascript has a 200k JS runtime.
A tool that designers can use to make animations in HTML5/CSS3 is desperately needed if we are ever going to move to a truly post-Flash world. We can't expect everyone to be an HTML developer, and achieving the same level of complexity and polish is extremely difficult when just working with code.
We are glad you are trying out GWD. You are correct that it seems like a bit of overhead just to render a simple rectangle. However, as alphakappa astutely observed, there is some overhead to parse the JSON data which describes the various shapes and to render those shapes in canvas(es).
What you see is the entire canvas rendering library used by GWD. That code will be reused for additional shapes you create, including more complex shapes you can create with the Pen tool.
You bring up a great point though. In most cases, you probably don't need to draw shapes (and the overhead that comes with the runtime). If you want to rectangle elements on stage, a much better option is to use the Tag tool (the fourth tool from the top) and add HTML elements such as DIV and give them background colors and modify the border styles using the Properties panel.
We are working on our help documentation to educate our users in how to optimize their content in both size and performance.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team - aka the ones tasked with making this application. ;o)
<div id="rectangle"></div>
#rectangle { width: 200px; height: 150px; background #FF0000; }
...by default?
Great observation! We have had this discussion internally as well.
For now, we wanted to have a clear separation in the types of content the user is creating on a canvas, since canvas enables different types of content. And, in some cases, there isn't a 1-1 fallback between a canvas shape definition and an HTML element, e.g., an oval with inner radius.
However, we realize that in a lot of cases users just want elements that look like rectangles, and a DIV with certain styles will suffice. We will work to direct users towards that workflow in such cases.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
Regards Mparaiso.
Flash was awesome. It made it really easy to block animated ads. My browsing experience had been wonderful ever since I installed a Flash blocker a few years ago. Also did wonders for my battery life.
Please, please help my browsing experience remain wonderful. Thanks.
I think an domain blacklist a la Adblock is probably the best idea but that won't help you with ads that are already present in the DOM on pageload.
I should have been more clear. My apologies.
Also believe it or not I don't want to block all ads, just animated ones. I want a general solution for All People, not just us nerds, and erasing advertising from the web would destroy a lot of businesses.
I want something browser makers can build in and turn on by default, which is what Safari has essentially done now with Mavericks (Flash and Java are blocked by default.. Flash under the rubric of power conservation).
That is the solution, frankly.
It would be a plugin that allows you to mark a spot on a page that is an ad and the plugin will record the very specific CSS path and hide it permanently for you and others that go to visit that site.
Maybe once you have a significant number of CSS paths you could do something with machine learning to identify the likeliness of a div containing an ad and block it when it crosses a certain degree of confidence.
Of course it's realistic. I've been doing it for years.
Do you also use a "@@*$document,domain=~foo.com|~bar.com" filter in order to accomplish it?
If there's an exceptional case I open it in a Chromium private browsing window.
[0] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/its-made...
Ghostery would only send data back to Evidon if GhostRank option is enabled.
NoScript blocks all javascript except for a whitelist you have to construct.
Like running ads in a standalone plugin which could be easily disabled. Wait...
I also use it to remove annoying sign-up overlays and Google+ notifications when I search.
It does not, unfortunately, prevent the ads from seeing you. (Very nearly literally these days.)
And in the end, he says that interesting content will get you "Likes," where in the current conversation of blocking ads does the visitor contribute after perusing the valuable and interesting content?
Of course whatever floats your boat as long as there's some sort of compensation for the media one is ingesting. I don't really mind non-intrusive ads all that much.
I just want an HTML5 version of a Flash blocker.
People make their money via ads? Sure, why not. Do I always have to see those ads, and just sigh and "suck it up", even though it's potentially ruining my browsing experience? I don't think so.
Would you pay a monthly fee to all the websites that provide you content in exchange for an ad free experience?
I guess the people running those websites will have to choose between continuing to publish content on the open web, knowing that some users won't look at the ads, or putting everything behind a paywall, knowing that some users won't subscribe.
I want to be the customer, not the product being sold.
No one is obligated to alter their own behavior in order to sustain someone else's business model. How publishers make money is their problem to solve, and if they're publishing content on the open web that's viewable with web browsers, then it's up to them to decide how to deal with the fact that some web browsers aren't going to download the ads.
They have plenty of alternative options: they can block all of the content unless ads are downloaded; they can put all of the content behind a paywall, etc. But most websites don't employ these methods, and do leave their content accessible to people who block ads.
The only winning move is to not visit a site.
No, it really isn't.
Unless you configure your browser otherwise. Which is what I'm recommending people do.
You aren't entitled to content just because it's good.
The safe thing to do is to block Ads by default. And only disable them when they've shown that they're not just letting mass third party Ad networks embed arbitrary script in their page whilst harvesting your private information.
Being online at all exposes you to risk and creates a footprint of your existence. Much like moving around in public does. And just as in moving around in public, the safest and most private thing to do is to not be in public at all.
Personally I block ads because I value my attention higher than advertisers value it. There is always an adversarial function built into ads; the advertising wants your attention, if nothing else, while I am interested in maintaining my focus. For similar reasons, I disable auto-suggest in Google search, animated gifs in the browser, and I use flashblock in all browsers that support it.
Anything continuously animated on the page whatsoever - no matter whether it's an ad, a subscription div popup, a "read next article" popup link, or a sharing toolbar - I block them all with element hiding helpers.
Because the greatest risk to me in browsing a random site is getting distracted and sucked down some rabbit hole. I use all the tools at my disposal to eliminate visual distraction.
By blocking adverts, you're harming the people who make the things you like, in direct proportion to how much you like their content. The more you visit their site, the more load you make them pay for without giving anything in return.
If you're okay with harming others to keep yourself safe, and harming your ability to consume additional content from the people you want to consume content from, then fine. Continue to block ads. But know you're part of the problem, and are being selfish.
I don't block ads but I do use NoScript which means I rarely see them. It is increasingly common for pages to load scripts from dozens of different providers and those sites I generally turn away from.
If you want to hobble around the web like it's 1995, that's your business. If you want access to content that's paid for by adverts, however, you need to be counted. That's the only way that content will be produced at all. You're not only harming the content producer, you're also harming yourself by lowering the number of interesting things in this world.
* pop-up blocking
* cookie blocking
* readability
..all of which are common browser features now. Because you can just not visit bad sites.
Yeah, didn't think so.
Blocking one form of advert is not even slightly the same as blocking all forms of adverts.
There is an implicit social contract created when a content distributor attempts to monetize the content - you can only obtain the content if you go through the monetization strategy. Sometimes that's a price on the content, other times that's an advert.
Circumventing the monetization strategy is a statement that you believe you're entitled to the content without paying for it. Almost universally, you're not, and this entitlement complex is pervasive through Internet users. TV shows, movies, music, software, anything that's been given artificial scarcity is a target for this entitlement attitude.
For some content, this attitude doesn't hurt the content producer enough to be meaningful, or the content producer has adapted. This is almost universally the most valuable and previously established content producers. Your large game studios, your record labels, etc. For other content producers, however, those who aren't as well established, the harm is more severe. The independent web comic, the unsigned band, the budding writer, the local newspaper. These people suffer because Internet users think they deserve the content these people create without providing compensation, and subsequently, less content gets made, talent can't be developed, gifted individuals can't specialize, and the world is a less beautiful place.
So sure, we can continue to use ad blockers, but at what cost? It's not hurting U2, and it's not hurting J.K. Rowling, but it's hurting other people, people who feel the kinds of pain a 1.5% vs. a 2.5% CTR might bring.
Well good, then you just misunderstood me. I'm asking for an animated HTML5 ad blocker to parallel a Flash blocker (or pop-up blocker, etc.) Not something that blocks all ads.
Although you didn't state it specifically, presumably you're ok with pop-up blockers. And therefore accept that it is ok for consumers to override the choices of bad web site designers in some cases, not merely choose to never visit the site again. Flash blockers did the same thing. Cookie blockers and readability are relevant for the same reasons. Consumers have a vote on how the web should be designed, too.
Exactly the wrong-headed sense of entitlement I'm talking about. No, you absolutely do not get a say, whatsoever. You either get the product through the monetization scheme set up by the content owner, or you get no content at all.
Its better to just accept this fact and work with it than attempt to boil the ocean.
one might also ask about what kind of entitlement an attitude like yours is bringing to the table.
It's probably more an issue of, we are in a difficult situation where some businesses don't know how to monetize outside of advertising (like google). And if everyone could block them, you'd effectively destroy businesses like that.
But on the flip side, the advert business model have gotten everyone used to 'free'. If google started selling "Search packs" where you get 100 searchs for $20, I don't think people would go for it.
It's a practical problem as much as a moral one. Content producers need to pay the bills somehow, and ads can be an effective way of doing that, if people don't try to circumvent them.
If you send me some data. I can choose to view or ignore any of it. You have absolutely no stance to make me acknowledge all of it, or any of it.
If I asked for some data from your server and you sent it, you sent it. But I don't have to read all of it. Even the bits that make you money.
Further, some people choose (or more likely didn't know they had a choice) to make you money, if you want their money, in aggregate their wishes are something you are interested in. At no point does entitlement enter into this.
By breaking that contract, you're preventing me from producing more content, content you apparently want. You're actually hurting yourself, from a practical standpoint, as well as causing harm to me.
seems unrelated.
Advertisements have a measurable cost on me. I have limited focus, losing it is expensive to me. I've seen advertisements change the thinking and perception of my peers, and it scares the crap out of me. I am all for uplifting the community through my actions, but this cost is too great. I have an extreme distrust of advertisments anyway, I never click on them (except by accident, which was frequently btw, until I started blocking them), so even If I acknowledge them, I'm still not making you money.
and finally, this is just a side note which I think only applies to me, most content I consume only has advertisements introduced by the gatekeepers (or I pay for it). Youtube, blip, et al. I'd rather the producers just use distributed systems, but we can't always get what we want.
And I mean social contract as in a contract you agree to by simply being part of society that stands above law. Don't kill people, don't steal things, that kind of thing. Things you do and are therefore allowed to be part of society.
Morals are subjective, the people that surround me believe there is nothing wrong with my actions, if your only standing point is that it's "morally wrong" then you have failed to convince me.
That, of course, is not your only point. You also believe that without the advertisements the content I enjoy wouldn't be produced. This argument has some grounds. The only problem is how actively degenerate ads are. I can outright improve almost all media just by removing them.
Let's say the "nightmare scenario" happens, and almost everyone blocks ads with ad block. Ad Block is running an initiative of acceptable ads. Ads that arn't decietful, distracting, or annoying (which, in my opinion, is a far more morally abhorrent act). So if everyone started using ad block. The world would actually get measurably better. Not worse.
Trying to dictate morality never ends well. Especially in cases like this, where the specific tech is not only possible, but also has unarguably legitimate uses, and is therefore pretty much inevitable. You just end up tilting at windmills, and the ensuing hot air back and forth just creates pointless noise, generally adding little to the discussion.
It would be nice if this was also a social version of user scripts where I could visit all the user scripts that other users wrote that work on the page I am currently on. A button in the browser that takes me to all the user scripts that match the URL pattern for that page would be awesome.
Your response to this is circumventing the ads and blocking them, denying the service which you use any revenue from you. Awesome.
How about if a site has intrusive over/under ads or otherwise intrusive behavior, you just don't visit it? And allow the sites you use that do ads without being jerks about it to actually continue to function and provide the service that you apparently value?
EDIT:
I'm not normally someone who crusades against ad blocking software, but your comment was extremely obnoxious and really annoyed me.
It uses Chromium Embedded and a fairly custom UI, so it looks like it's all HTML anyway. Maybe they packed it up as an app to get better FS permissions (amoungst other things).
https://twitter.com/doubleclick_pub/status/38471531196005171...
"Unable to open file due to the following error: The file was not created in Google Web Designer."
So, basically, Google is just creating their own proprietary format that's built on HTML. Even if you are just using it to construct ads you'll be somewhat locked-in to this toolchain. Since HTML is inherently open people will be able to build converters but it's still a bad precedent.
Adobe's Muse does a similar thing - if you publish to Business Catalyst using it it locks you into a proprietary "format" that forces you to stay on the platform and edit the site through Muse, or else it no longer 'compiles.'
Also we are still in Beta and we are working on adding many more features for our 1.0 release. Feel free to submit any features request through our public forums.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/ninja-...
via @ElliotGeno
I've been super excited for the HTML5/Canvas/JavaScript takeover of web interactivity from the grips of Flash, but the one thing I kept seeing in almost every single tutorial is that it's mostly - still - hand-coded stuff. That's cool for programmers, but the reality is that the "mass" market (among designers) isn't going to really adopt HTML5 until there are well-established visual tools.
Procedural graphic design is a fun exercise, intellectually interesting, and can have some amazing results, but the market for that type of design work is really limited.
This should help drive a real, solid, mass-designer-market adoption of the new standards. Cool.
However my point still stands. Windows is really behind Mac in regards to development software (or any type of software in general). Maybe I'm underestimating the Windows ecosystem, but that's been my observation over the years. I'd like to be proven wrong.
I'll lump this in with Dreamweaver for now.
Edit: The down votes are warranted, but I would wager that there at least a few people who will take the 'I need a web designer; search for same; well maybe I'll try this' path. That's all.
I would also like linux support, but it still looks like an impressive suite regardless.
Linux is a thing mostly for coder types, and probably would want the source code attached to it.. and probably since they dont want tho share this code with us.. no Linux version for now
Instead we have "Google Ad Designer" targeted at designers and marketers. OK, I was still interested at least to play with it for a while and see if I could recommend it to my designer friends, but no Linux support and worst of all, they use PC as a synonym of Windows and Mac as a synonym of Mac OS X. Sorry, but this isn't the 90's anymore, go back to your time machine.
So, I agree I'm not the target audience, but you have to admit the announcement can be perceived as misleading and off-putting.
I would expect better from Google.
Google are seriously bad at web design and copy writing it seems based on this.
If you value various aspects of keeping hardware and software separate, then not reinforcing this association -- and instead trying to draw the distinction -- is valuable.
A lot of people in a discussion like this will point out that many computer users don't know what an OS is in the first place, or don't draw any distinction between the computer, the OS, and the browser. That's true, but avoiding using the individual proper names of these things makes it even more true!
You know professional designers who only work with Linux? I don’t.
However, I was referring to myself. I was interested but couldn't use it, so I won't recommend it, as simple as that. I think software relies heavily on network effects, and many possible early adopters probably are running Linux too.
In my experience designers tend to be quite conservative in their choice of tools and probably won't ditch Flash just because this application appeared today. Developers are usually much more keen on trying out the latest tool, it's part of the trade.
In my opinion, it's a mistake to imply "Get the hell out of here, you're not the target audience" when you probably depend in these people to recommend the software to your target audience.
One of the primary complaints about Hype is that its HTML / CSS / JS output isn't very clean. I wonder if Google's tool produces better output.
EDIT: Looks like not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6470640
While everything has its tradeoffs, we went with this approach because:
- Our app has a lot of animation and interactivity capabilities not meaningfully expressed through anything but JavaScript. For example, we don't use CSS3 Animations nor transitions because they aren't powerful enough (pausing, synchronization, etc.).
- We have better control over how we express the DOM to the browser. There's plenty of browser bugs or incompatibilities which sometimes require us to on-the-fly change the DOM structure or which properties we are using.
- The user could easily bork the output so it could not be read back in
- No tool will ever produce output that will appease everyone :)
We provide lots of hooks in and outside of the runtime for your own JavaScript and HTML so you can still customize quite a bit.
So it isn't that our output isn't very clean (in fact I'm quite proud of the runtime and how we've been able to add features without increasing bloat); it is that edits are meant to happen from the app itself.
I see that Google's tool also seems to produce rather inscrutable output (see my edit to my original post). This does sound like one of those really hard problems where is pretty much impossible to balance the needs of the machine-modifiability with human-readability.
Thanks again for the reply!
There hasn't been much that's swayed us otherwise -- I think it was the right call.
The intersection between their target audience, and Linux is minute! Unless it came for free, investing in a Linux version of the app would have been a terrible use of resources
Just wondering.
In one fell swoop Google could educate the masses as to what search engines consider "good" code and simultaneously destroy the "machine-gun-the-fish-in-a-barrel" approach marketing people use for SEO.
Instead, we get Adobe Motion 2.0 HTML5 Street Fighter Edition Now Featuring Blinky-Movey-Thingies.
Granted, there have long been wysiwyg editors and this is a relatively simple part of the job of a web dev, but it's just another example of software eating the world.
All through the 90's web sites that let you build web sites were quite the rage, and then pagemaker/frontpage/et alia seem to just take over. Not entirely sure why but they did. Now here we are 17 years later doing it again.
I spent a number of years "liberating" my data from FrontPage by basically creating a new CMS and sucking it from html scrapes into a modifed version of markdown. I hope that Google learns from that experience and always provides for an 'easy' way to liberate your content from their tool so someone doesn't get stuck.
First I want to thank you all for taking the time to check out Google Web Designer and giving us your feedback! Keep it coming!
Over the last 24 hours we have received a ton of great feedback. One of the biggest questions/comments that I keep hearing is in regards to the broadly scoped name, "Google Web Designer". We chose this name intentionally. We know that it is a lofty name, but we have big plans on living up to it.
It is true that in our beta offering there is a strong focus on rich media. With the proliferation of mobile and Google being a huge player in advertising, we think that rich media was a solid first use case to tackle. Over time we plan on growing our tool set and functionality so that you can create any web content that you so choose.
This is just the beginning. You have the ear of the entire product/engineering team and with your feedback we hope to shape this tool into something special.
Thanks again!
Tony Product Manager | Google Web Designer
Interesting, but unless you're designing ads, this release is probably not worth your time.
I was very surprised to see that there are no templates...which makes it very hard to determine stuff like...is there any way to align columns and text?
Here's what I made in about 15 minutes:
http://so.danwin.com/googltest.html
It's quite easy to place things and the animation is pretty straightforward. What is extremely painful is how things behave when you click on things...like, it took me some time to figure out how to edit a Text box that I placed, and also how to change it from a paragraph to a headline.
In terms of usability, I can't image how this will be productive for anyone, including newbies. In the medium to long term, most people would be far off better learning how to do basic HTML in a text editor, GUI be damned here.
However, I'm disappointed to see that this deals with fix-sized units exclusively. The web is supposed to be fluid, ads and other content should be encouraged to be percentage-width based, or at least responsive to different screen sizes and layouts. This tool produces fixed-size ads, when they could have used it to encourage a big change towards responsive advertising.
Do you know if Google developed the technology themselves or if it is from an acquisition?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/ninja-...
Is there any plan to include Linux, and, or, BSD versions of Google Web Designer any time soon?
I think Dreamweaver actually helped me code better because after class I would always work at cleaning up the shoddy Dreamweaver auto-generated code. Kids kept wondering why I always passed validations after writing code, I stopped using Dreamweaver unlike everyone else in that class.
Getting tired of more and more Google products apparently not being tested to work in Firefox.
http://www.digitalworkshop.com/products/opus-creator.shtml
Paul
The procedure entry point GetSystemDefaultLocaleName could
not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll. Der Prozedureinsprungpunkt "GetSystemDefaultLocaleName"
wurde in der DLL "KERNEL32.dll" nicht gefunden.Google Web Designer is free. ;o)
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
Unless your wink is an attempt to mock them.
No, we misunderstood what davexunit meant by "free" and are sorry for the confusion.
Thanks, Google Web Designer team
The poster definitely meant free-as-in-speech software. Nevertheless, I'm unable to test it right now since it is not available for desktop Linux.
I take it from a few comments here that Google Web Designer uses Chromium Embedded Frame. I have ported Adobe Brackets, which uses Chromium Embedded Frame too, and it's not too difficult. Hardly a day's work. Is there a date when Google Web Designer will be available for desktop Linux?
Thanks, Pritam Baral
So they are investing in productivity tools for people to create apps for this new platform that will make it soon in the Android platform
This is a nice strategic move from Google.. since their ecosystem(the one they profit over) are the web.. the app ecosystem may be a shot on its own foot, since they cant control the cloud consume behavior by the device owners on apps in the same way they can on the web "platform".. (like the android forks from amazon and possible other big players)
So its easy to think of some HTML app ecosystem showing up in android, without switching off the current Dalvik ecosystem..
DW got/gets a bad name because of it's visual editor (and therefore lower bar of entry) but it's no better/worse than any other visual editor.
Easier to make websites --> More websites --> More ads --> More money for Google.
But Adobe decided Flash was too expensive to maitain on mobile and fired 700 employees and outsourced the rest of the Flash team to india. The remaining employees are now working on Bracket (...). And Sencha is more profitable than Flash division at Adobe.What's left of Macromedia? nothing, They should have stuck with Livemotion and Golive ... lol
The result is that the last version of Flash (CC) has less features than the previous ones ( some drawing tools gone...)
Its day too shall come and pass...