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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
by simonsarris 13y ago
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&ref_topic=3261495&rd=1 https://support.google.com/webdesigner/answer/3261498?hl=en&...
- cbhl 13y agoI 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.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoAdobe has Edge Animate for that and Adobe Flash can export to HTML5 as well. http://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/ http://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/
- camus 13y agoGiven Adobe track record on betrayal, and borderline extorsion schemes , I would not even touch their tools anymore. They had they chance with Flash,Dreamweaver and Fireworks... 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.
- lostPixels 13y agoAs a former Flash Developer, I will never put my time and money into learning Adobe software again.
- exodust 13y agoDon't blame Adobe if your Flash banners were crap. "Adobe software" is broad, covering a lot of ground. You're turning your back on the whole lot? Sounds irrational. Maybe check out this new Google tool, and see how you feel after about 10 minutes.
- camus 13y agoUsing closed source tools is about trust. When the trust is broken, nothing can get it back. That's what happened with Adobe and Developpers , they totally lost that market.
- dgesang 13y agoSent from your iPhone? ;)
- Marazan 13y agoHe isn't refusing to put time into learning Adobe tech because they produced bad code, he's refusing to put time in because Adobe knifed the Flex development community in the back. Then in the front. Then stabbed them in the back again.
- keyle 13y agoNo offence but I still make 5 figures using Flash/Flex/AIR for Fortune 100 companies. 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.
- alanh 13y ago“5 figures” hardly seems notable…
- seabee 13y agoThe upper end of five figures is perfectly respectable for that kind of work. I can't imagine people with Adobe product experience are in such short supply to warrant six figures...
- iguana 13y agoIn the bay area, Flex devs make > $100/hour, pretty much implying a 6 figure annual rate. Maybe the 5 figures are from another area or country. 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.
- indubitably 13y agoYou guys are so far out of touch with the reality of most people.
- dgesang 13y agoAs if Google had such a clean slate ... please ...
- at-fates-hands 13y ago>>>> Fireworks = Dead despite its powerfull features like jquerymobile skinning,project files as png files,games graphics, native app design, easily customizable through js. 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.
- krsunny 13y agoI never thought flash was all that easy to use. I could never get the timeline to cooperate with what I was trying to do (drag/copy/paste frames etc)
- andybak 13y agoThe Flash timeline was counterintuitive but once you grokked it, it was super easy and super efficient. I came to Flash from After Effects (much more intuitive keyframing) and hated Flash until my brain clicked with it.
- michaelbuddy 13y agothe flash timeline has poor visual cues on it as to what was going on. key frames area easy enough to get. but sometimes the timeline ends in a dash pattern, then there's the multiple open and closed ends on one timeline. All in all there are just too many states. Live motion was a good tool that just never got out of a buggy state but had an easier timeline to work in.
- gwdengineer 13y agoHi, 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&ref_topic=3227692 https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3181123?hl=en&r... Thanks, Google Web Designer team
- alternize 13y agothe first two links on that help center page result in 404s: "In Quick mode, you ..." (https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3227054 https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3227054) and "... animation, Advanced mode lets ..." (https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3228643 https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3228643)
- tumultco 13y agoThat'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/ http://tumult.com/hype/
- anarchy8 13y agoHow do you feel about having Google as a direct competitor?
- atburrow 13y agoMaybe an acquisition is in their near future.
- tumultco 13y agoGoogle itself doesn't scare me; it is really just team vs. team. I think we've got the best product and engineering expertise for this market. Clearly I'm biased :) so I'd encourage anyone to try Tumult Hype and let us know your thoughts (we've got a fully functional 14-day trial on the site). 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!
- svtiger 13y agoKeep up the good work! From first glance your product seems to have superior functionality and usability. So I'd gladly pay for ease of use alone.
- edraferi 13y agoGreat attitude. Best of luck!
- beernutz 13y agoI would love to check out your product, but it only runs on OSX. You might consider a port to drastically expand your potential client base. Google's free offering is cross platform already.
- jcvangent 13y agoIt is not the problem with people creating the ads that they don't want to create HTML5 banners. The problem lies with most media buying agencies that won't accept them for reasons like their system is not ready to handle this (HTML5) yet or the most heard reason that they want Flash banners even with old versions of Action Script because they seem harder to block by ad-blockers and thus think that more people will watch them. They forget the fact that most people are annoyed with them also ;-) 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..
- GhotiFish 13y ago>because they seem harder to block by ad-blockers and thus think that more people will watch 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." I have a lot of sympathy for the outreach companies trying to make advertising agencies behave. At some point, someone's neurons started firing and realized consumers had taken control over how they view media. Someone realized that eventually advertisements were going to be viewed of the users volition. Which meant they no longer could be deceitful, obnoxious, baiting, terrible, and rude. Or at least not transparently so. 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.
- pajju 13y agoYes, this looks as a perfect tool for ads — esp to create more appealing, eye-catching effects. But its Branded as Google Web Designer. :)
- e12e 13y agoI know what you're saying, but "appealing" and "eye catching" effects are generally mutually exclusive (to the user that isn't interested in the ads, but the content...).
- pajju 13y agoYes, they are. 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)
- icambron 13y agoYeah, 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!
- burgreblast 13y agoI think that's the charitable view. 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."
- austenallred 13y agoI see it first and foremost as an Adwords/Adsense add-on. More interactive ads = more clicks = more money.
- stevekinney 13y agoApple has a somewhat similar tool called iAd Producer.https://developer.apple.com/iad/iadproducer/ https://developer.apple.com/iad/iadproducer/ (I believe you might need the free developer account to view the page, however.) I know you can create iBooks Author widgets and other HTML5 components that aren't necessarily ads. Even if Google's goal is the same as Apple's (i.e. creating advertisements), I think that Google's branding makes their tool a bit more interesting for someone not expressly interested in creating ads.
- radley 13y agoIt's definitely an ad tool. The help section is entirely about making ads. If you look closely, the responsive layout is strictly for the ad, not the website.
- dudus 13y agoFlash was not designed to create whole websites either but that didn't stop people from doing it anyway.
- pjmlp 13y agoSame can be said about HTML and applications.
- znowi 13y agoMight as well be called "Google Ad Designer" :) There seem to be a hidden agenda in everything Google does these days.
- uxwtf 13y agoAgree. The name should not give false illusions about the product. "Google Ad Designer" sounds better along with Google AdWords
- kyledilger 13y agoIt's not hidden that Google makes its money through advertising.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoNor is it hidden that most ads served through Google's networks are frequently badly designed or use bloated Flash.
- gwdengineer 13y agoWhile Ads is an important focus area for Web Designer, we don't see it as an 'Ads only' tool. 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!
- egeozcan 13y agoGreat work, I really appreciate it and find value in it, but I think you have to be more clear about this "focus area" in the landing page.
- keyle 13y agoWhen I create a new "document" the first field is about which ad platform I want to use... For calling the product "Web designer", that sends a message...
- znowi 13y agoThe ad-centric intent is clear and trying to cover it with "we don't see it this way" only further alienates potential users (and worse, makes fool of them). Be up front and honest about the product you make.
- wpietri 13y agoThanks for the comment. Just out of curiosity, what does "iterate & push quickly" mean in your context? Some people use that to mean releasing every few hours; some every few months. What release frequency are you aiming for?