Google's Digital Creative Guidebook | Hacker News Reader

Google's Digital Creative Guidebook

creativesandbox.com

158 pointsevolve2k40 comments

It looks really impressive and I realize this is a creative showpiece, but is anyone else getting tired of all this "swiping" being forced upon users who aren't even using touchscreens? Between this and Microsoft's Metro swipes, it's getting a little ridiculous. I really hope this doesn't become an even bigger trend because it's horrible for usability.

Yes, especially considering that this particular piece isn't available on touchscreens. The click-and-drag experience is even worse with a laptop trackpad.

Agreed - the swiping is an issue for the desktop, which still dominates consumer and pro usage.

You could use the left/right arrow keys if you want.

I don't think it's quite tired yet. This is a gorgeous execution of the technique, especially considering the interactive elements (Play close attention the maps portion...really nice 3D effect there).

As far as marketing goes I think it beats out the typical static landing page.

I was looking at the source when I noticed that the formatting of http://creativeguidebook.appspot.com/js/fbk.min.js actually spells out "WE ARE HIVE". [1]

[1] http://www.wearehive.co.uk

Perhaps I'm being thick here, but I wasn't able to find anywhere this is spelled out. Care to elaborate?

Also, fun fact: Copying/pasting the code in that minified file either results in weirdness or complete crashing from Notepad++, depending on the file encoding setting.

I also didn't find any references in the minified code, but clearly this was done by WeAreHive, a small boutique agency in London.

From their website:

"We were brought in by adam&eveDDB to work on interactive pop-up book designed to showcase the talent and innovation of Google’s Creative Sandbox Gallery, and built entirely in HTML5 and CSS3."

Correction: HTML5, CSS3 and.. Flash.

Yes, I wasn't disputing the authors of the project, merely where it could be found written-out in the source. I figured it was encoded into the minified variables, but couldn't find anything indicating such.

According to martinp, the code was removed after his initial post.

Where is the Flash?

I should retract the last line of my previous comment.

While the site does indeed has flash, it's just because the standard YouTube's player respecting previous selections (or lack thereof). I used to have YouTube as HTML5, but recently re-installed Chrome recently and I guess it went back to Flash as a default player.

So, kudos to the developers. No more "but"..

Looks like it has been removed now.

I'm in the same boat, any ideas?

I added several line breaks within the first 200-or-so characters, which allowed me to paste the code fine.

Awesome. Does anybody have an idea how this is done?

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/17/beercamp-an-ex...

Thank you, but I was actually asking about the "WE ARE HIVE" being spelled out as spaces in the minified JS file linked above. It seems to be gone now, though. :(

Google's recent websites for marketing - this and http://www.themobileplaybook.com/ - really stand out. Their production value is just amazing, and in case of Mobile Playbook, content is great too.

It honestly is amazing.

I'm a front end dev, and have worked on some big and gorgeous sites, but damn... I've been working on startups for a couple of years and feel like the web has moved massively in that time... who ever is making this stuff is amazing (although I assume this isn't a single man effort)

Who else is feeling inadequate ;)

me :)

Both "books" strike me as sparse content veiled by (superb) visuals.

Sometimes style is substance.

They're great if you're using desktop or iOS, but fall short if you use Google's own devices. The mobile playbook serves a phone view to the Nexus 7 tablet, and a broken desktop view to the Nexus 4.

I wish they could develop a ebook publish platform with this technology. Handily beats Amazon's cloud reader.

It appears your computer doesn't support CSS3 3D Transforms...

Yes, Google, that's because you've blacklisted my perfectly good graphics driver and broken it for me (Chrome/Linux/Nvidia). Well played. How about next time you give ME that choice?

(I know about the workarounds. It's not my machine, I don't have root or sudo, and I can't be bothered to find out where Chrome is hidden on this mess of NFS-mounted filesystems. It used to work, now it doesn't. Story of the web.)

There is a flag to unblacklist your graphics driver in chrome. I have had to use it when experimenting with WebGL.

Go to chrome://flags and enable Override software rendering list.

Same here. Can anyone detail why? Browser, OS, hardware....

Cool, looks oddly familiar: http://2012.beercamp.com/

Does it say anything about "Mobile First"?

I'm not able to get past "The mobile optimised Creative Sandbox is coming soon..." on my iPad.

Don't feel bad, on my Nexus 4 I'm redirected to a mobile subdomain and 404'd.

But you probably mean something along the lines of: "Increasingly, users are accessing the web from a mobile, therefore it's critical that your presence on the web is optimized for mobile devices. Studies have shown that 2/3rds of users will not return to a site that is not optimized for mobile."

That was floated next to a Flash video embed with no fallback. But here's the fallback on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja7abx3OPOQ It was easy to find once I opened the whole presentation in a desktop browser with Flash support, click-dragged back to the page, clicked the magnifying glass icon to spawn the popup, then the More Info tab, then the YouTube icon in the lower-left corner of the video to 'view on YouTube'.

I'd send you a link, but there isn't one. It's all one URL. And you're probably not part of the 1/3 that will return to a site that isn't optimized for mobile anyway.

To add to the irony, it didn't work for me on Chrome v23. True, not the first time I see Chrome struggling to read fancy HTML5 sites (Google's Exquisite Forest was another one, and some areas on Chrome Web Lab are definitely better experienced with Firefox).

And yeah, I had to install flash in order to run the videos on this site...

Great fun, but I'd quite like to link to a certain 'tab' and send it in an email. Sadly, it looks like I'll have to email instructions on how to get to that 'tab', which will be tedious.

Jakob Nielsen would have a field day with this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the purpose of this isn't necessarily to be useable but rather attention grabbing.

Wow, this is truly an eye opener. Not as fast as I would like to see (running chrome on MBP 15 retina), but it's so beautiful.

All I can think is that they are violating Apple's patent on page-turning. So much for not being evil, Google...

I'm getting a 404. Looks like this has been removed?

My bad, it's just 404'ing from mobile

It's their bad; phone tries to redirect to the mobile subdomain, while tablet gets the proper "mobile coming soon" placeholder.

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