Google Web Designer • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Web Designer

#131

Post by tumultco » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

cbhl wrote: post #25

simonsarris wrote: post #22

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.

That's the purpose of my startup :); we've been making an HTML5 animation tool for OS X for the last two years:

http://tumult.com/hype/

Re: Google Web Designer

#132

Post by rch » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 5:58 PM UTC

ferdo wrote: post #76

This will die a quick death just for its deceptive name. It should be called Ad Designer.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=web+designer

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.

Re: Google Web Designer

#133

Post by zodiac23 » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

WhiteNoiz3 wrote: post #106

JacksonGariety wrote: post #43

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 ke…

From File > New if you select a blank HTML file, you get an empty HTML file with no Ad specific JavaScript.

Re: Google Web Designer

#134

Post by Samuel_Michon » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

Shamanmuni wrote: post #75

toomuchtodo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not the intended audience/user.

But it's called "Google Web Designer", so many of us web developers probably thought we were the target audience. I first thought it was a Dreamweaver competitor with better support for JS libraries and HTML5, which would be great. 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 fri…

> see if I could recommend it to my designer friends, but no Linux support

You know professional designers who only work with Linux? I don’t.

Re: Google Web Designer

#135

Post by tumultco » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

wakkalakka wrote: post #65

tumultco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tumult Hype's exports are essentially 3 lines of HTML so it is easy to embed in other documents and output mostly takes the form of JSON animation data and a JavaScript runtime file. It isn't meant to be hand-edited or even read, since we minify heavily to keep file sizes extremely small. While everything has its tradeoffs, we went with this approach because: - Our app has a lot of animation and interactivity capabil…

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I do in fact agree it is probably unreasonable for people to expect automatic code generation to be hand-editable without disturbing the machine-editable workflow, but it is something that comes up a lot. 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…

Yes, we ultimately felt it was a fool's errand, especially because we're a startup with limited resources so we need to focus on the right problems. When we launched version 1.0 long ago it seemed like this wasn't necessary for a "minimum viable product" considering we're targeting graphic designers who might not have as much coding experience anyways.

There hasn't been much that's swayed us otherwise -- I think it was the right call.

Re: Google Web Designer

#136

Post by oscargrouch » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

dudus wrote: post #110

oscargrouch wrote: post #89

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.

Not if you remember who is in charge from the android ecosystem now.. there's certainly a fusion movement between Android and Chromium OS happening..

So its easy to think of some HTML app ecosystem showing up in android, without switching off the current Dalvik ecosystem..

Re: Google Web Designer

#137

Post by teleclimber » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:02 PM UTC

dombili wrote: post #72

didgeoridoo wrote: post #16

Might be useful to let marketing department guys crank out ad banners without bothering any devs. I'm still waiting for http://macaw.co/ for responsive site & application prototyping.

As someone who's trying to get into web development (not professionally), apps like Macaw makes me want to buy a Mac. Windows is so limited compare to Mac in this regard.

It sounds like Macaw will (eventually) come to Windows:

https://twitter.com/macawco/statuses/378215232512208896

Re: Google Web Designer

#138

Post by robodale » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:02 PM UTC

look at the code it produces. It makes MS FrontPage look clean and elegant.

Re: Google Web Designer

#139

Post by icambron » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

pajju wrote: post #33

simonsarris wrote: post #22

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&...

Yes, this looks as a perfect tool for ads — esp to create more appealing, eye-catching effects. But its Branded as Google Web Designer. :)

Yeah, the product positioning here is awful; it's like someone just went through the marketing copy at the last minute to strip out its ad-centricity. My very cynical guess is that it went like this:

#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!

Re: Google Web Designer

#140

Post by jneal » Mon, Sep 30, 2013, 6:06 PM UTC

I think this looks like a great tool. I can almost imagine this being built 100% for ads, and then someone higher up at Google saying "Wow, this thing is so powerful it could build websites" and then it morphed into this existence. Just pure speculation but it's a little weird to call it Google Web Designer when everything else puts ads front-and-center.