Wednesday 2 October 2013

Google Announces Web Designer Beta As Free Download

By Peter Suciu

Search engine giant Google announced that’s its new HTML5 development tool – Google Web Designer — is available as a free download. The tool, which is now in beta, will reportedly appeal to both seasoned coders and web design novices.

"Now available: Google Web Designer! Build beautiful HTML5 content with ease," the company posted on its Google+ feed. "Google Web Designer is a new professional-quality design tool that makes HTML5 creative accessible to everyone from the professional designer to the Photoshop dabbler. Download the beta for free."

Response to the Google+ message was mostly positive, although some comments called for a Linux version. At present only a PC and Mac version has been released in the open beta.

Google’s tool is apparently designed to be a one-stop shop for creation and publishing of ads, but these don’t have to be limited to those on Google’s own DoubleClick or AdMob. While Google will make money when these ads run on its sites, it does provide the option to publish ads on "any other ad network."

The Google Web Designer app will allow users to have a complete stage for building ads, with visual editing tools as well as code view that more technically-proficient users can access. To help streamline the process users can build the HTML5 and CSS that drives an animation or have the tool build it instead.

"In Quick mode, build your animations scene by scene and we’ll take care of the frames in between. In Advanced mode, animate individual elements using layers, easily changing the location of elements within the stack," Google noted on the Web Designer site.

There is also a middle-ground option that allows users to build two scenes, where the tool can create on-the-fly animation while letting the more experienced designers animate individual layers and elements independently of one another.

There is reportedly also a 3D authoring tool that allows ad designers to rotate objects along any axis.

As noted there is both the design and code view, with the ability to flip back and forth to immediately see any changes and how these may reflect back in the designs.

While the ads can be created on a PC or Mac with Google Web Designer, the finished ads can also be viewed across a number of platforms.

"It’s evident that multi-screen consumption is the way of the future; mobile and tablet devices are becoming consumers’ first screens, so the content that is developed needs to work seamlessly across these screens," Google engineer Sean Kranzberg posted on Monday via the Double Click Advertisers Blog. "There are already more end-users in HTML5-compatible environments than there are in Flash-compatible environments, and HTML5 ad spend is expected to overtake Flash spend within the next two years."

"HTML5 is a universal language for building beautiful, engaging content that can run across desktops, smartphones, and tablets," added Kranzberg. "We think that Google Web Designer will be the key to making HTML5 accessible to people throughout the industry, getting us closer to the goal of "build once, run anywhere."

Google Web Designer is currently available in beta.

Source: Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online




 

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