gwdengineer

Hi,

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

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!

Hi,

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

Hi,

No, we misunderstood what davexunit meant by "free" and are sorry for the confusion.

Thanks, Google Web Designer team

Doh! Good catch!

Our docs team has updated the help links.

Thanks, Google Web Designer team

Hi, Currently we do only support editing document created in GWD, but we are outputting HTML, CSS and JS. We only add some author time data in order to enhance the authoring experience but otherwise everything else is just plain HTML and CSS. Our minified JS is only added for the Ads use case and to support the rendering of Canvas shapes.

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.

Hi,

Google Web Designer is free. ;o)

Thanks, Google Web Designer team

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

Hi,

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)