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Google Web Designer

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Re: Google Web Designer

#101
post #96

Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000. 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.

Google Web Designer 2013 = Microsoft Frontpage 2000?

That's exactly what popped to mind immediately. Maybe it was that hairball of code combined with the "generator" meta tag.

Re: Google Web Designer

#102

Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000. 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.

The amount of code it generates for a page containing just a rectangle is not a good way to judge the tool. They may have some finite overhead because of the expectation that most users will be using the tool to create more complex pages. If the tool is good for the average ad-page that's created, while maintaining cross-browser compatibility, and bad for extremely simple pages, then who is to judge?

I agree. The big(gish) script they injected is just fixed overhead, as is the CSS for positioning the canvas. It's just stuff we're used to having in separate files. The actual non-boilerplate part is this:

{\"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

Re: Google Web Designer

#103
post #25

The most important feature of this (to Google(?)) is the built-in ad editor. 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&...

I think that makes sense -- a lot of Google's (paying) clients have been using Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash to make ads for years; if Google wants them to adopt HTML5 technology they need to make tools that are as easy to use as Flash was.

Adobe has Edge Animate for that and Adobe Flash can export to HTML5 as well.

http://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/

Re: Google Web Designer

#104

Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000. 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.

My favorite part is the WebKit specific code... Don't be Evil and something about standards right? 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"

> My favorite part is the WebKit specific code... Don't be Evil and something about standards right?

Meaning what? Google isn't directly involved with WebKit anymore and can't make them implement standards.

Re: Google Web Designer

#106

Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000. 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.

Despite the poorly chosen name, this is a WYSIWYG tool for animation, not a site design tool. If all you care about is markup, use a text editor and make your animations by hand. Compared with Adobe Edge Animate (which is very similar), the markup is actually very clean (aside from the big script block, which is for ad functionality and also animation / drawing routines). You can see the animations defined as real keyframes in CSS, not overly reliant on javascript, which is good. It means there is a chance of taking those and using them independently of the JS runtime code, and also that execution will take advantage of native browser animation functions, rather than being bottlenecked by JS code.

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.

Re: Google Web Designer

#107
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't -- it's a tool for designing ads. Calling it "Google Web Designer" was a terrible decision, but that's clearly not what the tool was meant for.

Ad development is the last listed feature, if that is the main purpose of the app then their website is very misleading.

I agree it's very misleading but they do clarify it in the first sentence of the help page.

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

Re: Google Web Designer

#108
post #60

Downloaded. Opened. Drew a rectangle. Filled with #FF0000. 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.

Who cares about what you think? Give some constructive criticism or shut up. Do you know how much code this is for a runtime and how many browser incompatibility issues this solves.

I care, else I wouldn't be reading these comments.

Re: Google Web Designer

#109

The most important feature of this (to Google(?)) is the built-in ad editor. 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 was not designed to create whole websites either but that didn't stop people from doing it anyway.

Re: Google Web Designer

#110

You know what this looks? Chromium OS will be integrated in Android, as a HTML5 application framework.. running side by side with the Dalvik apps.. 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…

That was a long stretch there pal.
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