Watch a Video of Developing Chrome Apps on Desktop and Mobile Distribute and Profit

 This video is worth the view to see where Google is headed when it come to web and native apps on the desktop and mobiles.

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/09/chrome-apps-101-video-shows-googles-vision-of-future-web-apps-on-mobile-and-desktop/

A New Tool for Web Designers Has Been Launched by Google for Building HTML5 Sites and Ads

This new visual tool called "Web Designer" has been launched by Google.  It is a new tool for building interactive sites and ads.  Google is billing this as "professional-quality design tool. This new tool is now officially in public beta and available for download in Mac and Windows.



While this ad pedigree shines through across Web Designer (the default layouts are for DoubleClick rich media ads and AdMob mobile ads, for example), there is nothing in the tool that would prevent you from building interactive single-page sites and animations for other purposes, as well. Some of the features, however, are currently only available for ads, though Google says it plans to expand these tools for other purposes in the future.

At its core, Web Designer is a visual tool, but you can also delve right into the JavaScript and CSS to fine-tune different aspect of your site. Indeed, Web Designer allows you to manipulate all of your code directly in a built-in editor and lets you quickly preview your creations in every browser you have installed on your machine.

The tools come with all the usual visual design tools you’re probably familiar with. Some of the more interesting ones Google has developed for Web Designer include a pen tool for free drawing, as well as a timeline for managing your animations. Web Designer also features the ability to create 3D content using the power of CSS3, as well as a set of pre-built components for galleries, maps and embedded YouTube videos.

For animations, one of the core features of the application, Web Developer features a Quick mode for building animations scene by scene and an advanced mode that gives designers more control over each of the elements on the page.

It’s worth noting that projects like Adobe Muse, Reflow and others include most of Web Designer’s features, too. But by making Web Designer available for free, Google is putting quite a bit of pressure on the incumbents in this space.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/30/google-launches-web-designer-a-visual-tool-for-building-interactive-html5-sites-and-ads/

Bootstrap 3 Introduced This Week Expediting the Development of Responsive Websites

Bootstrap, the wildly popular front-end framework for web development, launched version 3 this week, promising to make it easier to develop responsive websites that look great whether viewed on a phone, tablet or desktop screen.

For web developers familiar with Bootstrap, version 3 is a fairly major change. They’ve totally revamped the grid system and gone all-responsive. The fixed grid is gone, replaced with four new grids for phones, tablets, desktops and large desktop screens, enabling a seemingly endless variety of layout possibilities as your screen size scales up or down.

Bootstrap 3 has also jumped on the “flat design” bandwagon with a new look and feel for its buttons, navbars and other components. They’ve jettisoned support for the problematic IE7 and Firefox 3.6 as well.

Bootstrap has only been around for two years and originally started as an internal project at Twitter by Mark Otto (@mdo) and Jacob Thornton (@fat), who have since left the social media giant. It has rocketed in popularity to become the most watched/forked open source project on Github. If you’ve visited any “modern” looking responsive websites lately, chances are decent that you’ve been to a site built with Bootstrap. Meanpath actually measured that 1% of the 150 million websites they index use the framework.

Bootstrap has its detractors, many of which lament the “sameness” that it spreads across the web when folks don’t customize it. However, it is hard to deny its utility, and it’s not that hard to customize it to stand out from the crowd.

In a fit of frustration (and cheapness) in trying to find a new web developer, I adopted it for ourreal estate site and ended up being able to do a bunch of web design independently. The last thing I had time for was worrying about CSS for a responsive grid, media queries, breakpoints, menu bars, etc. Looking forward to trying out version 3 for some better layout options for small screens, but unfortunately, this launch has just burned a few of my weekends.

You can check out the latest version at getbootstrap.com.

http://www.geekwire.com/2013/bootstrap-3-launches-easing-development-responsive-websites/
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