News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google Web Designer by simonsarris on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:37PM (#6470557)
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&...

Re:Google Web Designer by cbhl on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:39PM (#6470570)
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.
Re:Google Web Designer by tumultco on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:57PM (#6471111)
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 by anarchy8 on Monday September 30, 2013 @03:05PM (#6471561)
How do you feel about having Google as a direct competitor?
Re:Google Web Designer by tumultco on Monday September 30, 2013 @03:28PM (#6471721)
Google 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!

Re:Google Web Designer by beernutz on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:36PM (#6472546)
I 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.

Re:Google Web Designer by alanh on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:32PM (#6472807)
“Drastically?” The vast majority of the web developers I know use OS X.

And, I guess, most of the marketers, too.

Re:Google Web Designer by laureny on Monday September 30, 2013 @10:04PM (#6473600)
> “Drastically?” The vast majority of the web developers I know use OS X.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by rimantas on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @02:06AM (#6474428)

  > Mac OS is close to nonexistent in that area in the rest
  > of the world.
I guess you dont't live in the rest of the world. I am from a small exUSSR country in the Europe and while I would not claim majority for OS X but to claim that it is nonexistent is very wrong. My last company (Java/PHP/Frontend) was Mac-only. In the current company the majority is on Macs (that includes Android and WP developers).
Re:Google Web Designer by welly on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:48AM (#6475132)
Really? My last web developer position in Australia was in an office full of Macs. My web developer position previous to that was in New Zealand was in an office full of Macs. My current position here in the UK is in an office full of Macs. Every web development house I've ever worked for, contracted with or freelanced with has been in an office full of Macs.
Re:Google Web Designer by digitalengineer on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:00AM (#6474994)
Dutchman here. Most designers use MacOsX here. Developers go with Windows. Design-savy or iOS developers use both.
Re:Google Web Designer by Cthulhu_ on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @07:30AM (#6481804)
Also Dutch here. Developers go with Windows if they do not get a choice; unfortunately, most major companies demand everyone uses Windows.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by rtdp on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:32AM (#6475090)
I do agree here. I do develop in India, and rarely i meet people with Mac. Most devs use linux and most html and UI guys go with windows.
Re:Google Web Designer by nadnerb on Monday September 30, 2013 @10:55PM (#6473762)
By 'rest of the world' you must be discounting Australia then ;)
Re:Google Web Designer by sjwright on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:15PM (#6473828)
As an Australian, I've always thought of our country as the real-world embodiment of what Americans believe when they think of their own country...
Re:Google Web Designer by seanmcdirmid on Thursday October 03, 2013 @01:56AM (#6487420)
I visited Bali once and as an American, had an identity crisis looking in the mirror at all the Australian tourists.
Re:Google Web Designer by Nekorosu on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @10:16AM (#6476278)
Moscow, Russia – Macs everywhere. Odessa, Ukraine – a lot of Macs and more are coming.

And this is a two year old observation.

Re:Google Web Designer by gmazzotti on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @11:08AM (#6482830)
Uruguay here: All designers use Mac OS, developers use Windows or Linux
Re:Google Web Designer by seanmcdirmid on Thursday October 03, 2013 @01:54AM (#6487416)
Most web developers/designers in china use OS X also.
Re:Google Web Designer by easytiger on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @04:35AM (#6474932)
> The vast majority of the web developers I know use OS X.

That's what we call a filter bubble

Re:Google Web Designer by lostsock on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:31PM (#6473027)
Wow really? Where (in what bubble) do you live?
Re:Google Web Designer by taftster on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:58PM (#6473133)
I'm guessing the bubble called Silicon Valley. They tend to have a fairly skewed view of the world there.
Re:Google Web Designer by nityananda on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:08PM (#6473806)
Well, I am from Europe and from people I know only around 15% uses Mac. I was myself using Windows/Linux for all development and Photoshop work till last 3 years, when I moved to Macbook Air.
Re:Google Web Designer by giantSlayer on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @10:19AM (#6476303)
Windows are for users and Mac are for makers. ;)
Re:Google Web Designer by dirkgently on Thursday October 03, 2013 @01:01AM (#6487278)
Oh please. Designers are not makers. Vast majority of developers I know use Linux.
Re:Google Web Designer by tcdent on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:20PM (#6473470)
Los Angeles based developer here. Practically everyone uses a Mac that I know.
Re:Google Web Designer by sneak on Monday September 30, 2013 @08:19PM (#6473219)
The one where the vast majority of web developers live.
Re:Google Web Designer by kamjam on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:50PM (#6473567)
There's this entire platform of users who develop in a magical language called C# and run entirely on Microsoft platform. It might just catch on and get quite popular.

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)

Re:Google Web Designer by codygman on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @02:35AM (#6481021)
We don't need any nix at all!

|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!

Re:Google Web Designer by debaserab2 on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:02PM (#6473384)
> the vast majority

You're actually discounting the entire world outside of SV right now?

Re:Google Web Designer by paulftw on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:16PM (#6473448)
and he can still make a living while doing that.
Re:Google Web Designer by tripzilch on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:54AM (#6475146)
what now, being able to make a living makes one right?
Re:Google Web Designer by JonnieCache on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:23AM (#6475063)
>vast majority of web developers

That is an amazing thing to write on the internet.

Re:Google Web Designer by smtddr on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:29PM (#6473499)
I'm pretty sure the majority of digital artwork, both visual & audio, is done on OSX. I have never heard of any major company in this field that had its artists on anything other than OSX. Maybe linux for some render-farms or something, but the artists' primary workstation is macosx. Also, all the major digit-art tools work sooooooo much better under OSX, or even just under Linux. Example, I've used Autodesk's Maya under windows and under Linux 64bit. The exact same machine, dualboot, into Linux to run Maya is like night & day. This simple little kitchen scene[1] was too much for Windows to handle, would freeze up the mouse pointer while trying to rotate around and work on the models. In linux, silky smooth. Also, the audio-production software on mac is superior to anything ever. Avid ProTools, Logic Pro,etc. Imagine the kinds of scenes LucasArts/Pixar/Dreamworks/etc got going on. When you're project starts to get big and require more RAM to keep it all in memory and flowing well; Linux & OSX will beat Windows completely. Now I'm not going to put all the blame on Windows, perhaps AutoDesk and Adobe don't put as much quality work into the Windows versions. And why should they? Really, I see the Windows versions as just gateways for beginners and young people to pirate them and learn.When you get serious and it's your profession, you switch to OSX. Yes, I said it. Any serious digital-artist is on a mac. Good day sir!

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by Digit-Al on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @03:09AM (#6474638)
Considering the very powerful, hardware accelerated 3D games that run smoothly under Windows, I would consider the possibility that if Maya cannot render a scene without freezing, maybe that is a problem with the software developers and not Windows.
Re:Google Web Designer by noptic on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @04:13AM (#6481272)
This might be true, but I think you miss the point.

People will use the enviroment where the tools run stable.

Re:Google Web Designer by pjmlp on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:33AM (#6474309)
If you live in US that might be right, but on the rest of the world?

No sir!

Re:Google Web Designer by AdamN on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @02:44AM (#6474545)
The rest of the world isn't where the money is ... so why would he develop for a market that can't even afford a mac?
Re:Google Web Designer by laumars on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @12:26PM (#6477172)
I keep forgetting America is the only developed country in the world. I guess I'm so busy playing games on my PC and surfing the net on my HTC One, that sometimes I forget I'm poor and only bought these devices because I couldn't afford to buy Apple.

</sarcasm>

You really need to get some perspective about just how big the IT industry is outside of America.

Re:Google Web Designer by csomar on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @07:22AM (#6475404)
What?! All the digital printing agencies I've been to were using iMacs. I live in a country with a Per Capita of $3,500. That's more than an order of magnitude lower than the US.
Re:Google Web Designer by pjmlp on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @03:31AM (#6474732)
I beg to differ as today's reports show.
Re:Google Web Designer by ekianjo on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:18PM (#6473837)
Silicon Valley is a well known "home" for OSX.
Re:Google Web Designer by kayoone on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @02:58AM (#6474598)
In some circles yes, but theres alot of web developers that are still on Windows for whatever reason. I am from Germany and people here are less prone to brand marketing and i still see quite alot of people using Windows, even people i highly respect for their skills. Im mainly talking about coders though, not designers.
Re:Google Web Designer by Kesty on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @04:13AM (#6474860)
Reasons range from:

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by beernutz on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @05:43PM (#6485592)
I will say here, that I am one of those people that do not like OSX. My main issues are getting it to behave with the muscle memory I have developed over years of use with windows and linux machines. Home and End key behavior, actually quitting an application when closed, full-screen apps (though I understand this is fixed in recent OSX builds), and other minor annoyances keep me from fully embracing OSX. I understand that these are personal preferences, and not problems with OSX for the most part.

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

Re:Google Web Designer by kayoone on Thursday October 03, 2013 @10:10AM (#6488984)
Exactly my thoughts. I use OSX alot for different reasons but i still think i am more productive on Windows/Linux. Keyboard shortcuts and behaviour is consistent as opposed to OSX where its kind of a pain.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by garethadams on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @08:28AM (#6475644)
I assume this was numbered as a bitmask so people can represent their choices as a single integer?
Re:Google Web Designer by dirkgently on Thursday October 03, 2013 @01:03AM (#6487283)
> As weird as it sound some people might actually not like OSX.

Oh yes. I wouldn't take a job if they offer Apple only choices.

Re:Google Web Designer by NicoJuicy on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @12:21PM (#6477136)
Actually, here in Europe, MAC doesn't seem that popular.

Most of the people i know just use Windows (Belgium)

Re:Google Web Designer by asdasf on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @10:12AM (#6482467)
And literally zero of the web developers and designers I know use OS X. This is why a single person's social circle isn't a useful indicator of global marketshare.
Re:Google Web Designer by shrikant on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:49PM (#6472880)
It doesn't say anything about Linux, but I guess more than one platform is technically "cross platform" :(
Re:Google Web Designer by bromagosa on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:45PM (#6473078)
Yep, and I hate it when they use "PC" as a synonym for Microsoft Windows. I do have a PC!
Re:Google Web Designer by V-2 on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @04:34AM (#6474926)
It's Apple that made PC synonymous with Windows machines (with all their "Mac vs PC" ads). Yes technically speaking it's incorrect, but that's human language for you, it just happens. Sometimes the other way round, eg. walkman was once Sony's tradename, but eventually all portable cassette players were called so.
Re:Google Web Designer by bromagosa on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:25AM (#6475071)
Not really, it actually comes from long before that.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by V-2 on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:43AM (#6475112)
Clearly Apple subscribes to this terminology, and I don't think it has much of an interest in putting forward the impression that Windows is the only option on PCs and concealing the existence of Linux.
Re:Google Web Designer by bromagosa on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @06:04AM (#6475173)
I think it does. From the very beginning they wanted to sell computers to people by making them think they work like home appliances. If people knew computers are actually universal machines, then they wouldn't be as willing to pay more for the same components with a different brand printed on the machine's case, or a different software running in them.

Besides, that gives them a single competitor to fight against.

Re:Google Web Designer by V-2 on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @10:10AM (#6476223)
Is it really easier to face one big nearly monopolist opponent instead of two who're fighting against eachother? Also one important obstacle for the adoption of Apple products was the common notion that there's no plausible alternatives to buying a PC. That's why they invested heavily in sending the message of pluralism - "think differently" etc.
Re:Google Web Designer by ekianjo on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:19PM (#6473842)
Yeah, and a Mac is a PC, internally speaking too. So, it should OS based : OSX, Windows. This, coming from the number 1 tech company in the world. Kinda disappointing.
Re:Google Web Designer by cdcarter on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:30AM (#6474295)
Yet somehow everyone understands what people mean when they say "Mac or PC"...

Prescriptivists.

Re:Google Web Designer by bromagosa on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @03:42AM (#6474776)
This has nothing to do with prescriptivism whatsoever. This is like calling the blue "e" icon in your desktop "The Internet". It's just plain wrong naming.

In tech, things should be called by their name, or you risk future confusion.

Re:Google Web Designer by ekianjo on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:17PM (#6473835)
Cross platform but not Linux. That's "limited" when you do web development.
Re:Google Web Designer by D9u on Monday September 30, 2013 @10:48PM (#6473725)
Too bad those platforms don't include Linux & FreeBSD.
Re:Google Web Designer by ekianjo on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:22PM (#6473848)
Sadly Google has more or less stopped supporting Linux on desktop since Larry Page came into office (Picasa and others...). Hardly surprising. Even though at Google everyone uses a flavor of Ubuntu for their desktops.
Re:Google Web Designer by michaelhoney on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:45AM (#6474357)
I don't think tumultco would see ROI porting to Windows or Linux. Quite apart from the actual development effort, managing two or more codebases, dealing with Windows fragmentation and piracy... ugh.

Yes, you'd drastically expand your potential client base – but end up with worse revenue and higher support costs per customer.

Re:Google Web Designer by dagge on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @02:38AM (#6474520)
As long as we're doing shameless plugs: checkout my cross-platform product at http://tweenui.com/animator – it's for creating simple HTML5 animations (focus is mobile display ads) in the browser. You can download the result or publish to the cloud.
Re:Google Web Designer by svtiger on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:10PM (#6472389)
Keep 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by zach_s on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:59PM (#6473957)
It may be tough, but porting your application to Windows would be a great idea and help you compete against Google in the long run. Good luck with it, and from what I've checked around on your website it seems like a great tool/competitor to Google!

(I'm on a Mac, still I have Windows machines and know a huge amount of web-developers who abide by Windows)

Re:Google Web Designer by alexcroox on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:20PM (#6472768)
You might consider hosting that intro video on a better platform, buffered so slowly for me with a 120MB connection. Granted your site is probably getting hit by HN, but when attention spans are so short, many may give up long before I did.
Re:Google Web Designer by tumultco on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:31PM (#6472801)
Thanks for reporting this; our site should be able to handle this amount of traffic no problem and the video loads pretty quickly for me. Where are you located and does the problem still happen?

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by coverband on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:30PM (#6477652)
"it is really just team vs. team" -- that's a great way of looking at it. Good luck with the additional attention and hope you can convert new eyes into more customers.
Re:Google Web Designer by ekanes on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:42AM (#6474344)
Love your attitude. If you can position yourself as the best alternative to Google's product it's not a bad place to be - they may expand the market. Good luck.
Re:Google Web Designer by edraferi on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:21PM (#6472451)
Great attitude. Best of luck!
Re:Google Web Designer by benologist on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:32PM (#6472514)
They're the perfect competitor - they validate the market, they almost always fail, and they acquire winners.
Re:Google Web Designer by robgough on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:57PM (#6472665)
And of course they'll pull the plug in 18 months or so thus leaving people wanting for a replacement :P
Re:Google Web Designer by atburrow on Monday September 30, 2013 @03:22PM (#6471688)
Maybe an acquisition is in their near future.
Re:Google Web Designer by digitalengineer on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @05:04AM (#6475002)
Your App is also mentioned a lot in the world of InDesign users looking to create interactive e-books. The HTML5 import of InDesign works well Hype. Hype was mentioned just last week at the Adobe User Event I helped set up. These people are designers, not programmers and your App can really help them. #eyeopener
Re:Google Web Designer by recurrie on Monday September 30, 2013 @08:04PM (#6473152)
Hype is amazing tool - only took a few minutes to get up to speed on it. We built an educational touchscreen kiosk in it, and then were able to deploy on an iPad by just scaling it down and downsampling the bitmap assets. A really polished tool.
Re:Google Web Designer by fuzzywalrus on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:04PM (#6472357)
I nabbed Hype 2 off the mac app store only a few weeks ago or so. I haven't had much time behind it but it seems promising. I'll have to compare the two utilities....
Re:Google Web Designer by Samuel_Michon on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:40PM (#6470988)
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 by camus on Monday September 30, 2013 @03:48PM (#6471864)
Given 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.

Re:Google Web Designer by lostPixels on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:47PM (#6472606)
As a former Flash Developer, I will never put my time and money into learning Adobe software again.
Re:Google Web Designer by exodust on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:40PM (#6473542)
Don'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.
Re:Google Web Designer by Marazan on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @09:06AM (#6475806)
He 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by camus on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @08:08AM (#6475570)
Using 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by dgesang on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @09:00AM (#6482101)
Sent from your iPhone? ;)
Re:Google Web Designer by keyle on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:09PM (#6472723)
No 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.

Re:Google Web Designer by alanh on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:34PM (#6472817)
“5 figures” hardly seems notable…
Re:Google Web Designer by seabee on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:19PM (#6472994)
The 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...
Re:Google Web Designer by iguana on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:54PM (#6473574)
In 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.

Re:Google Web Designer by indubitably on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:18AM (#6474242)
You guys are so far out of touch with the reality of most people.
Re:Google Web Designer by tjmc on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @02:14AM (#6474440)
Totally agreed. The problem with Flex is it was designed for developer ease first and user experience second. Virtually every code example reimplemented a regular HTML form feature in Flash. You always knew when you hit a Flex app on the web because the first thing you'd see was a "loading" bar.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by rschmitty on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @08:16AM (#6475602)
I think you mistake the intended audience of Flex. As a former Flex dev all of the apps I was involved with were for enterprise, building complex apps. None of the marketing or talks I attended from Adobe were around building your blog in Flex. People using Flex to make their "webpage" were indeed in the wrong.

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...

Re:Google Web Designer by tga on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @04:55AM (#6474983)
Nothing of the sort, all in all, Flex is indeed a great platform. The sad reality is that it only runs on a crappy, obsoleted runtime (Flash) so it is not useful for most web development, but otherwise everything he says is true.

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.

Re:Google Web Designer by droidist2 on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @09:16AM (#6475860)
With Adobe AIR you can deploy to iOS and Android, so that covers most of the mobile market. I'd certainly pick that over the whole HTML mess.
Re:Google Web Designer by keyle on Thursday October 03, 2013 @05:33PM (#6492268)
Sorry dude, I did mean 6. :/
Re:Google Web Designer by dgesang on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:19PM (#6473466)
As if Google had such a clean slate ... please ...
Re:Google Web Designer by at-fates-hands on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @12:57PM (#6477395)
>>>> 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.

Re:Google Web Designer by krsunny on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:46PM (#6471021)
I 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)
Re:Google Web Designer by gwdengineer on Monday September 30, 2013 @02:35PM (#6471371)
Hi,

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

Re:Google Web Designer by alternize on Monday September 30, 2013 @03:35PM (#6471781)
the first two links on that help center page result in 404s: "In Quick mode, you ..." (https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3227054) and "... animation, Advanced mode lets ..." (https://support.google.com/webdesigner/topic/3228643)
Re:Google Web Designer by gwdengineer on Monday September 30, 2013 @04:35PM (#6472181)
Doh! Good catch!

Our docs team has updated the help links.

Thanks, Google Web Designer team

Re:Google Web Designer by mkl on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:25PM (#6472787)
Please change the webpage to allow downloads in Linux (or any other OS) - many people would like to at least try it in WINE. Also, your "Available for Mac and PC" button is confusing - most Linux users run it on a PC.
Re:Google Web Designer by nityananda on Monday September 30, 2013 @11:03PM (#6473787)
Well and 'Mac' is PC too.
Re:Google Web Designer by andybak on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:51PM (#6471063)
The 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by michaelbuddy on Monday September 30, 2013 @04:44PM (#6472247)
the 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by jcvangent on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @08:11AM (#6475589)
It 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..

Re:Google Web Designer by GhotiFish on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @11:12AM (#6476675)
>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.

Re:Google Web Designer by gwdengineer on Monday September 30, 2013 @05:24PM (#6472467)
While 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!

Re:Google Web Designer by znowi on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:48PM (#6472879)
The 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by keyle on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:11PM (#6472728)
When 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...
Re:Google Web Designer by egeozcan on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:07PM (#6472714)
Great 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.
Re:Google Web Designer by wpietri on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @11:59AM (#6483220)
Thanks 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?
Re:Google Web Designer by radley on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:10PM (#6470789)
It'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.
Re:Google Web Designer by sneak on Monday September 30, 2013 @08:20PM (#6473230)
You say it like an accusation. Google's the biggest company in the ad business.
Re:Google Web Designer by GhotiFish on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @11:13AM (#6476683)
The introduction is misleading, it is an accusation. A valid one.
Re:Google Web Designer by stevekinney on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:52PM (#6470663)
Apple has a somewhat similar tool called iAd Producer.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.
Re:Google Web Designer by dudus on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:43PM (#6471001)
Flash was not designed to create whole websites either but that didn't stop people from doing it anyway.
Re:Google Web Designer by pjmlp on Monday September 30, 2013 @02:38PM (#6471393)
Same can be said about HTML and applications.
Re:Google Web Designer by krrishd on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:12PM (#6473425)
HTML? How else was website building intended to be?
Re:Google Web Designer by tcdent on Monday September 30, 2013 @09:22PM (#6473481)
"HTML and Applications"

I'd agree that it was not the original goal of HTML to develop full applications.

Re:Google Web Designer by pjmlp on Tuesday October 01, 2013 @01:05AM (#6474185)
To be an hyperlinked documents, nothing else.
Re:Google Web Designer by znowi on Monday September 30, 2013 @04:09PM (#6472029)
Might as well be called "Google Ad Designer" :)

There seem to be a hidden agenda in everything Google does these days.

Re:Google Web Designer by kyledilger on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:57PM (#6472915)
It's not hidden that Google makes its money through advertising.
Re:Google Web Designer by Cthulhu_ on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @07:32AM (#6481811)
Nor is it hidden that most ads served through Google's networks are frequently badly designed or use bloated Flash.
Re:Google Web Designer by uxwtf on Monday September 30, 2013 @06:17PM (#6472752)
Agree. The name should not give false illusions about the product. "Google Ad Designer" sounds better along with Google AdWords
Re:Google Web Designer by austenallred on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:43PM (#6470606)
I see it first and foremost as an Adwords/Adsense add-on. More interactive ads = more clicks = more money.
Re:Google Web Designer by pajju on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:42PM (#6470603)
Yes, this looks as a perfect tool for ads — esp to create more appealing, eye-catching effects.

But its Branded as Google Web Designer. :)

Re:Google Web Designer by icambron on Monday September 30, 2013 @02:04PM (#6471168)
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 by burgreblast on Monday September 30, 2013 @07:07PM (#6472951)
I 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."

Re:Google Web Designer by e12e on Monday September 30, 2013 @12:53PM (#6470668)
I 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...).
Re:Google Web Designer by pajju on Monday September 30, 2013 @01:05PM (#6470758)
Yes, 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)