

Google's Digital Creative Guidebook - evolve2k
http://www.creativesandbox.com/guidebook

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rpm4321
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.

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

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martinp
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>

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pixelbath
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.

~~~
guiambros
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.

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andrewfelix
Where is the Flash?

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guiambros
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"..

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flixic
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.

~~~
flog
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 ;)

~~~
sspross
me :)

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

~~~
jrabone
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.)

~~~
jamesmiller5
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.

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

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8ig8
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.

~~~
mgcross
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.

~~~
guiambros
:)

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...

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fredley
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.

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blowski
Jakob Nielsen would have a field day with this.

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

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chj
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.

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

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

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

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

