Web Designer Blog
The latest news and tips from the Google Web Designer team
Google Web Designer Tips - Part 2
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
This document compiles the top tips collected from years of helping users on the
forum
, and from the
Google Web Designer blog posts
.
1. Writing custom actions for events
Issue
: when you need an action that is not available in the Events dialog.
Solution
: You can write custom actions in Google Web Designer easily using the following tips:
Use the
setTimeout
method to call a function or evaluate an expression after a specified number of milliseconds (see example 1 below).
Add an event to perform an action, then copy that action in Code view to use in your custom action (see example 1 below).
Use Code view to add a global variable (under the line window.gwd = window.gwd || {};) if you want to set a flag and only trigger an event when the condition is true (see example 2 below).
If you want to use an event that isn't listed in the Events panel (e.g. ‘change’), you can add an event that exists in the Events dialog, then edit it in Code view (see example 3 below).
Check our help page on
Component APIs
for properties, methods, events, and more examples.
Example 1: go to a different page after 5 seconds (use setTimeout)
Note: this tip can be used to go to another page after 30 seconds to meet the
AdWords requirements
that state animations cannot last longer than 30 seconds.
In this example, there is an animation that loops infinitely in the first page and a second page without any animation. We will add an event so that 5 seconds after the first page is shown, it will go to the second page.
To start, we want to find the code that goes to the second page so that we can use this in our custom action. This can be done by adding an event to go to the second page. The specific event doesn’t matter, since we're only concerned with the action at this point (going to the second page).
Open the Events panel and click on the + button to add an event.
Select the page ID for the first page as the Target.
Select
Mouse > Click
as the Event.
Select
Google Ad > Go to page
as the Action.
Select
gwd-ad
as the Receiver.
Select the second page (page1_1 in this example) in Configuration. You may also set other settings such as the transition type, duration, etc.
Click
OK
to save.
Switch to Code view and find: script type="text/javascript" gwd-events="handlers". Copy the action code for going to the second page.
Switch back to Design view. Now we will add the custom action to be triggered 5 seconds after the page is shown.
On the first page with animation, click the + button in the Events panel to add an event.
Select the first page ID as the Target.
Select
Page > Ready to present the page
as the Event.
Select
Custom > Add custom action
as the Action.
In the Custom Code dialog, name your function. In this case, you might use a name such as after5s. Then enter the following code, pasting the action code that you copied previously:
setTimeout(gotoPage, 5000); function gotoPage() { gwd.actions.gwdDoubleclick.goToPage('gwd-ad', 'page1_1', 'none', 1000, 'linear', 'top'); }
Click
OK
to save.
Remove the first event that you added just to generate the action code to copy:
You now have the
working file
that goes to the second page 5 seconds after the first page is shown.
Example 2: use timeline events to loop the ad through all pages twice.
In this example, the ad has 3 pages with animation, each with an event to go to the next page after the animation is finished.
The ad loops through all the pages twice, i.e., page 1 > page 2 > page 3, looping one more time and ending on page 3 after the second loop. Let’s add timeline events on each page to go to the next page at the end of the animation.
Add a timeline event to go to the next page at the end of the animation
On the first page, at the last keyframe, right-click on the Events layer and select
Add event
.
Double-click on the event marker to open the Events dialog.
Select
Google Ad > Go to page
as the Action.
Select
gwd-ad
as the Receiver.
In Configuration, select the page ID of the page to go to. In this example, it’s page2. You may also set other settings such as transition type, duration, etc.
Click
OK
to save.
You can edit this event by double-clicking on it in the Events panel.
Repeat the steps above to add timeline events for the other pages. On the last page, configure the event to go back to the first page.
The Events panel should show the following timeline events:
When you preview the ad, it will start with the first page, go to the next page at the end of the animation, and continue to loop. Next, we will set the ad to loop through the pages once and stop at page 3.
Use a counter to keep track of the loop
Add a global variable as a counter by going to Code view and searching for window.gwd.
After the window.gwd line, add the following code to initialize the counter: var counter = 1;
On the last page (page3 in this example), only go back to page1 if the counter is less than 2, then increment the counter. To do this, go to Code view, look for the action that goes to page1, and copy it. It'll look like this: gwd.actions.gwdDoubleclick.goToPage('gwd-ad', 'page1', 'none', 1000, 'linear', 'top');
In Design view, go to page 3, and double-click on the event marker at the end of the animation to add another timeline event. Select
Custom > Add custom action
in Action.
Type in a function name such as count.
In the code text area, enter code to check whether the counter is less than 2, paste the code to go to page 1, then increment the counter like this:
if (counter < 2) { gwd.actions.gwdDoubleclick.goToPage('gwd-ad', 'page1', 'none', 1000, 'linear', 'top'); counter++; }
Click
OK
to save.
In the Events panel, remove the timeline event on page3 that goes back to page1 now that we have the custom action with the counter to do that.
You now have the
working file
that loops twice through the 3 pages and stops at page 3.
Example 3: use custom events
In this example, you will draw a text input element on the stage and add a ‘change’ event to output the text content in the console when the Enter or Tab key is pressed.
Select the Element tool in the Toolbar.
Click on the custom element and type input in the Element field.
Draw the input element on the stage and give it an ID in the Properties panel.
Right-click on the input element on stage and select
Add event...
Select
Mouse > click
as the Event.
Select
Custom > Add custom action
as the Action.
Type in a function name such as myInputChange.
In the code text area, add the custom action to log the value of the input field to the console when it's changed:
inputContent = document.getElementById('input').value; console.log(inputContent)
Click
OK
to save.
Now we will replace the click event with a change event in Code view in 2 places:
When you switch back to Design view, you'll see the change event in the Events panel and you can edit it further as needed.
You now have the
working file
that outputs the input text content in the console window when there is a change event in the input field, i.e., the input’s value is committed on an Enter or Tab keypress.
2. Adding global variables in Design view
This tip describes how to add a global variable in Design view without switching to Code view.
Click on the plus button in the Events panel to add an event.
Select
document.body
as the Target.
Select
Google Ad > Ad initialized
as the Event.
Select
Custom > Add custom action
as the Action.
Give the function a name such as declareVars.
In the code section, declare and initialize your variables with the gwd. prefix such as gwd.myCounter = 0;
When the ad is initialized, the global variables can be used anywhere in your file.
Attached is the
example
that traces the gwd.myCounter variable in the browser console log using a timeline event at the first keyframe.
We hope you have enjoyed these tips, and don't forget to download the working files and give these solutions a try!
Posted by San K, Google Web Designer Team
Google Web Designer Tips - Part 1
Friday, December 15, 2017
This document compiles the top tips collected from years of helping users on the
forum
, and from the
Google Web Designer blog posts
.
1. Use CSS transform for animation
Issue
: choppy animation when animating Top/Left/Width/Height.
Solution
: use CSS transform (
3D translation
and
scale
) for animation instead of Top/Left/Width/Height.
Google Web Designer defaults to CSS transform when creating CSS-based animation because the CSS transform property provides a higher frame rate and smoother animation. What this means is that when you use the selection tool to move an element or the transform tool to resize it in an animation, it will default to CSS transform (3D translation and scale section in the Properties panel) (see our
help
). However, many users change the Top/Left/Width/Height fields in the Properties panel when animating elements and this will cause choppy animation.
To avoid choppy animation, try using 3D translate X and Y for position, and 3D scale for size in the Properties panel when you animate elements. If you use the selection tool (or arrow tool) to move an element or the transform tool to resize an element, that should take care of it for you by default.
Note: if the animation of an image is choppy on IE when using CSS transform, wrap the image with animation in a div by right clicking on the image and selecting Wrap, then in the Properties panel of the parent div, set Selection 3D Rotation Z to 0.01 to workaround the issue.
2. Pixelation when using 3D scale for animation
Issue
: when using 3D scale for animation, the image becomes pixelated when scaled up.
Solution
: start with a large image that is the same size as the scaled up image. Add your starting and ending keyframes. At the starting keyframe, scale down the image using the Properties panel's 3D scale options. This creates an animation where the image grows in size without being pixelated.
3. Groups for reusable elements
Grouping objects creates a reusable element that can be placed in documents as "instances", which are references to the group's elements. Any change that is made to the group is reflected in all the instances of that group (see our
help
).
One example where groups are useful is a CTA button with an exit event that exists on different pages in the creative. Another benefit is that events for the elements in the group are retained in all instances of the group as long as the group instance has an ID assigned to it.
To create a group, right-click on the element on stage and select
Create Group...
You can then view the group in the Library panel and drag it on to the stage to create additional instances.
Groups are also used in the Swipeable and Carousel Galleries in dynamic creatives to display a custom layout for each product item in a collection. For example, you can create a group to display a product's image, name, description, price, etc., and this layout can be repeated for each product in the feed. This workflow will be described in a future dynamic tips blog post.
4. Make an element appear/disappear at a specific time during the animation
Issue
: how to create an animation with an element that needs to be hidden/shown at certain keyframes.
Solution
: use
opacity
and
step-end/step-start
easing. You can also watch the YouTube video on this topic
here
.
In this example, a div is hidden until the 3s mark. Then it is animated until 5s and disappears at 5s. To do this, let’s switch to the timeline’s Advanced mode then select the first keyframe. In the Properties panel of the element, set the opacity to 0 to hide the element.
Add the second keyframe where you want to show the element, at 3s in this example, and set the opacity of the element to 1.
At this point, if you preview, you will see that the element animates from 0 opacity to 1 because the easing is set to linear by default.
Right-click on the span between the keyframes and change the easing from linear to
step-end
. At this point, the element will not show until the second keyframe.
Add a third keyframe, at 5s in this example, and animate your element (in this example, it travels across the stage).
To hide the element again, add another keyframe at 5.5s, and set opacity to 0 and easing to step-start.
Then drag the keyframe so it’s right next to the keyframe at 5s.
Now you have accomplished turning an element on or off at a certain keyframe! You can view the
source file
or check out our
blog post
to use other ways to achieve the same effect.
5. How to replace an image without losing the events or animation
Issue
: some users build a new creative using an existing creative and want to easily change an image without losing events or animation.
Solution
: use
Swap image
in the context menu (see our
help
).
Select the image on the stage to be changed, right-click on it, and select
Swap image...
In the Swap image dialog, select the new image (if it’s already in the Library), or add a new image and select it. Click
OK
to save.
6. How to update an element’s size and position without affecting animation
Issue
: when building multi-size creatives, many users may start with one size, then build additional sizes using the first completed creative instead of using responsive design. In this workflow, it is necessary to update the element’s size and position in the new creative while keeping the animation the same.
Solution
: use CSS transform for animation (solution #1 in this post) , then update the Top, Left, Width, and Height properties in the
first keyframe in Advanced mode
to update the element’s position and size without affecting the animation.
When using animation, the best practice is to animate using CSS transform to avoid choppy animation. In addition to the performance benefit, you can also quickly update the element’s size and/or position without having to update all keyframes.
For example, let’s say you have a 100x100px element at the first keyframe like this:
In the second keyframe, it moves across the screen and shrinks to half of its size like this:
Now let’s say you’re building a bigger creative and the element has to be 200x200px. You can simply select the first keyframe and update the Width and Height properties. Since Width and Height are not used to animate the element, what you change in the first keyframe will propagate across all subsequent keyframes.
The element will now be 200x200px and travel across the screen by 200px with its size reduced in half:
7. How to loop the Swipeable Gallery infinitely
Issue
: when autoplay is set, the Swipeable Gallery only autoplays until the last frame and then returns to the first frame.
Solution
:
autoplay
the Swipeable Gallery infinitely by rotating once when the autoplay ends, and setting the rotation time and autoplay duration for smooth looping.
In this example, there are 3 images, autoplay is set in the Properties panel, and autoplay rotation is set to 3000 in the Advanced properties for the Swipeable Gallery. This means that the gallery autoplays from the first to the last frame in 3 seconds.
When you preview, you will see that the Swipeable Gallery autoplays once, then goes back to the first frame and stops. To autoplay it infinitely, add an autoplay ended event to rotate once forward.
Right-click on the Swipeable Gallery and select
Add event
.
Select Swipeable Gallery >
Autoplay ended
as the Event.
Select Swipeable Gallery >
Rotate once
as Action.
Select the Swipeable Gallery ID as the Receiver.
In Configuration, set the Rotation time to be the same as the autoplay duration. In this example, this is 3000 with forward direction.
Click OK to save.
You now have a
working file
that loops the Swipeable Gallery infinitely.
We hope you have enjoyed these tips, and don't forget to download the working files and give these solutions a try!
Posted by San K, Google Web Designer Team
New usability features for Google Web Designer
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
We’re excited to introduce several new improvements to make Google Web Designer faster and easier to use. Whether you're copying and pasting across projects or dragging and dropping layers across the timeline, the tool allows you to work the way you need. Today, we're launching the following updates:
Timeline Enhancements:
Advanced Mode - Zoom:
Users can now zoom in and out of the timeline allowing for more precise placement of keyframes.
Multiple keyframe/thumbnail selection:
Easily select or delete all the keyframes (in Advanced mode) or thumbnails (in Quick Mode) in a layer at once.
Animate properties in the first thumbnail:
Quick Mode now allows editing the first keyframe and retaining the other keyframe properties.
Drag to hide/lock layers:
It is now possible to drag-select hide/lock icons in the layers instead of clicking each icon one by one. And users will still be able to click each layer to lock or hide, if desired.
New easing functions:
We have added two new easing functions for animation: step-start and step-end. Using these new functions for animated property values, users will gain more control over their animation transitions.
New easing functions for the animations in Google Web Designer
Copy/paste across documents
Any element that can be copied in the same document can now be copied to other documents, including assets and groups. In addition, if assets or other data conflicts, a dialog box will open to ask you to manually choose the resolution.
Preferences panel
Customize Google Web Designer to your style and workflow preferences in one central location. For example, you can set a number of Code View defaults including the color theme and preferred keymap.
JavaScript library support
DoubleClick Studio users can now easily import the Greensock JS Library for creatives made in Google Web Designer. You can also add a variety of plugins including TweenLite, TweenMax, and Text Plugins to help you build your creatives.
JavaScript library support in Google Web Designer
Today, we also launched a new Google Web Designer Learning path on
Academy for Ads
. This resource can help you learn the ins and outs of Google Web Designer in quick, five minute modules or dedicate more time to working through the full Learning path.
Ready to get started? Check out our Google Web Designer
ad gallery
for inspiration. If you’ve already downloaded Google Web Designer, it will automatically update to reflect the new features listed above. If you haven’t yet downloaded the tool, you can
download it for free here
.
Posted by Jasmine Rogers, Program Manager, Google Web Designer
Masking in Google Web Designer
Friday, November 4, 2016
Investigating Masking in Google Web Designer
Masking routinely tops the list of requested features in Google Web Designer. We investigated different approaches to implementing masking in HTML5, and we concluded that the limitations of existing browsers make effective masking infeasible at this time. We recognize that this is a disappointing result, so we’re using this space to explain (and show!) what we tried, and why we think masking is not yet ready for production.
What is masking?
A mask defines a region of the plane where content (the
maskee
) is rendered; outside of this region, the content is invisible. For example, a circular mask may be used to create a spotlight effect, by only revealing content within the "light". A complete masking solution would meet the following criteria:
Everything is maskable.
The maskee may include text, images, animation, SVG, canvases, videos, custom elements, and even other masks.
A mask can have any shape.
It may be as simple as a circle, or it may be multiple disconnected regions with complicated geometry.
Masks can be animated.
The mask can be translated, rotated, and scaled; it can be morphed into new shapes; and in the most general case, the mask can be a video.
Masks stack and overlap.
Placing one mask inside another is equivalent to intersecting the two masks. If two independent masks overlap, the output of one is rendered atop the other, with no other interference.
Events are masked.
Events originating outside the mask are blocked, and otherwise they pass through to the maskee without modification.
What did we try?
There is no way to achieve all of the above properties on any particular browser, much less every browser we support (i.e., Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE 10+). We don’t require perfection, however; an approximate solution can still be useful in practice. We initially experimented with
CSS3 masking
. Smooth mask animation is only possible if the mask is a CSS basic-shape, but otherwise all masking behaviors, such as those listed in the section above, are supported. However, CSS3 masking is not yet available on all major browsers.
Another way to implement masking, which is already supported by all major browsers, is to represent a mask as an element styled with
overflow: hidden
. This exhibits all masking behaviors, although the mask’s shape is equivalent to the element’s border, which effectively limits masks to rectangles, circles, ellipses, and capsules. Despite this limitation, overflow-based masking would still be useful for basic effects like wipes and reveals. Moreover, on browsers that support CSS3 masking, the mask’s shape could essentially be arbitrary, although animation would still be limited to the element’s transform. Unfortunately, we discovered that even in simple cases, overflow-based masking produced blurring and flickering artifacts on some browsers.
Finally, it’s worth noting that in simple cases, masking-like effects can be achieved simply by overlaying an image with transparent regions, which is already possible in Google Web Designer. This technique, however, is really the opposite of masking -- instead of rendering
only
within the mask region, it paints over everything that is
not
in the mask region.
CSS3 masking
We started by exploring CSS3 masking, which comes in two forms: clipping (clip-path) and masking (image-mask). Clipping crops the rendering of an element and its children to a binary mask defined either through an inlined SVG, or a “basic shape” consisting of a circle, and ellipse, or a polygon. Masking crops the element’s content to an image’s boundary, and then applies an alpha channel determined by the image content. As of this writing, browser support for CSS3 masking is as follows:
Clipping
is supported
on Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, although Firefox’s support for basic shapes is turned off by default.
Masking
is supported
in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, but Firefox currently does not allow control over the image’s size or position.
IE does not currently support CSS3 masking, but future support
is likely
, at least for Edge.
We tested CSS3 clipping and masking in several different scenarios, and here’s what we found (
demo
):
Clipping.
Clip paths defined as SVG elements offer the most flexible representation of a mask’s shape, but CSS animations applied to SVG clipping elements are ignored at render time. Basic shapes offer less expressive mask geometry, but at least they can be animated: for circles and ellipses, the centers and radii are interpolated, and for polygons, control points locations are linearly interpolated (assuming that each keyframe has the same number of control points). One quirk is that in some browsers,
overflow: hidden
must be set on the mask element, or else the clipping path will be ignored if the maskee contains 3D transforms or has animated transforms (2D or 3D).
Masking.
Masking allows essentially arbitrary mask geometry, but animation of the mask shape is limited to defining CSS keyframes for mask-position and mask-size, allowing the mask to be translated and (non-uniformly) scaled. However, the mask is always rendered with positions and sizes rounded to the nearest integer, resulting in jagginess artifacts when the mask is animated slowly (
demo
).
In summary, smoothly animatable masks are only possible using clip-path with a basic shape — and even then, currently only in Chrome and Safari.
Overflow-based masking
An alternative to CSS3 masking is to set an element's overflow to “hidden”, and then add the maskee as a child element:
<div id=”mask”>
<div id=”maskee”></div>
</div>
This crops the maskee to the bounds of the parent element. Because the maskee is a child of the mask, however, moving the mask will also move the maskee. To allow them to move independently, we can insert an intermediate element that cancels changes to the mask.
<div id=”mask”>
<div id=”maskCancel”>
<div id=”maskee”></div>
</div>
</div>
For example, if mask is moved ten pixels to the left,
maskCancel
is moved ten pixels to the right, giving the appearance that maskee remains stationary while the mask reveals a different portion of it. More generally, changes to the mask configuration can be canceled as follows:
The intermediate element is forced to the same size as the mask, by setting its width and height to 100%.
If the mask’s left and top are (x, y), the intermediate element’s left and top are (-x, -y).
The intermediate element’s transform origin is identical to that of the mask, and its transform is the inverse of the mask’s transform.
Similarly, if the mask is animated using CSS3 keyframes, additional keyframes rules must be added to the intermediate layer to cancel this animation. Assuming that animation is limited to transform (per existing
best practices
), this means:
Animation of the mask’s transform-origin is copied to the intermediate element.
The inverse of the mask’s transform animation is applied to the intermediate element.
(2) is by far the most complicated part of the process, and as it need not be understood to evaluate the practical effectiveness of overflow-based masking, we discuss it in the Appendix at the end of this post.
We built a
proof-of-concept implementation
of overflow-based masking, and discovered that even in simple of cases, animating the mask transform produces blurring and flickering artifacts on some browsers. For example, here is a screenshot of Chrome’s output, using a circular mask that translates back and forth (
demo
):
It appears as if the maskee is first being rendered with the intermediate layer’s transform applied, and then re-rendered with the mask’s transform, resulting in blurring and flickering artifacts. This behavior is not consistent across browsers: as of this writing, the artifacts appear in Chrome in all cases, they appear in Firefox if the animation includes scale or rotation (
demo
), and they do not appear in IE or Safari. However, on all browsers, no artifacts are present if overflow is set to visible, but the mask/intermediate layer/maskee construct is otherwise left unmodified.
Animation of an element’s left, top, width, and height (LTWH) is generally discouraged, and by default GWD uses LTWH for static layout and translation/scale for animation. Still, in light of these rendering artifacts, it’s worth considering whether LTWH makes more sense for masking. One problem with LTWH animation is that it has
worse performance
than transform animation: dozens of objects can easily be animated at 60Hz using transforms, but will slow down to 10Hz or worse if LTWH is used. If a document only has one or two masks and isn’t too complicated, however, perhaps the performance penalty is acceptable. A second problem is that LTWH values are rounded to the nearest integer at render time, which avoids the rendering artifacts discussed above, but at the expense of creating clunky, stair-step-like animations when objects animate slowly (
demo
).
Stay tuned
We would love to add masking to Google Web Designer, but as an HTML5 authoring tool, we're limited by what browsers are able to support. Still, the web is constantly evolving, and browsers are continually improving, so we still hope and expect to ultimately be able to add masking to our suite of tools.
Posted by Lucas, Software Engineer
Appendix: Inverting animation for overflow-based masking
If a mask is rotated or translated, then an inverse animation can easily be created by reversing the order of each key’s transforms and negating the values of each transform channel. For example, if the mask’s transform is
translate(tx, ty) rotate(rz) scale(sx, sy),
then the intermediate element’s transform is
scale(1/sx, 1/sy) rotate(-rz) translate(-tx, -ty).
If a mask is also scaled, then the inverse scale animation is defined in terms of a reciprocal. For example, a simple linear scaling from s1 to s2 over a time interval T can be written as
and the inverse scaling animation is then
Functions like this cannot be exactly represented in CSS3, which
defines animation curves
as 2D cubic Bezier segments where the first dimension is time and the second dimension is normalized value. While we could simply disallow scaling, this would make it impossible to achieve wipe and reveal effects. Instead, we generate samples of the ideal inverse scale animation
and fit an approximating animation curve. For simplicity, in our experiments we constructed inverse animations as piecewise linear functions, although more compact results can be obtained by fitting general cubic Bezier curves. To determine an acceptable error tolerance for the approximation, consider an absolute error e resulting in a net scale at the maskee of
At a distance
d
from the transform origin, this yields a positional error of
sed
, and so given a maximum mask size of
M
, the maximum error
E
is
Positional discrepancies can therefore be kept below half a pixel by requiring
Intuitively, the smaller the scale value, the larger the error we can tolerate, because only a narrow slice of content will be visible through the mask. (It is also possible to invert animation of uniform scale by animating z translation, but this technique does not generalize to animations that include non-uniform scaling, and it alters the meaning of existing z translations authored in the maskee.)
Common animation topics from the Google Web Designer forum
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Animation is a key element in most creatives made in Google Web Designer and our community forum is filled with interesting and complex topics on the subject. In this blog post, we will go over some common animation scenarios that are brought up in our forum, and provide workarounds to avoid these issues in creatives.
Animation goes behind other elements unexpectedly
Users have reported that some elements go behind other elements in animation on a browser preview. Let’s walk through the issue and try some potential solutions to the problem. Download
my_test.zip
to to see the actual example file.
To begin, we see a background gray image in a layer, and another image that shows 10 with a white background sitting on the top. 3D rotation animation is applied to the “10” image.
When you preview on a browser, the animation appears as this.
Approach 1 - Adjusting Z translation value for the background.
First, we want to make sure the rotating image is always above the background image. In order to do so, let’s move the gray background further behind by giving it a negative Z translation value in Properties Panel. When you change the Z value for the gray image, it appears smaller than the original image dimensions. To offset this, you can adjust the size of the image by using the Transform tool.
The “10” image should now be rotating in 3D on top of the gray background.
Please preview to ensure that the new adjustment of the 3D z value works on all browsers.
Approach 2 - Adjusting Z translation value for the element animated in 3D.
You can also adjust z translation value for the animated element to make it stay on top of other elements. If approach 1 doesn’t fix the issue, or the background image can not be altered for some reason, please try this approach.
In this example, select each keyframe for the image “10”, then add 110px of Z translation for all the keyframes. This will make the image appear larger than the original dimensions. To fix that, try adjusting the 3D scaling for each keyframe to a value that’s less than one, like 0.93. You may have to test different values to find out what works best for your animation.
Animation overlaps
We have heard occasionally that the elements on animation overlap each other when previewed on Safari even though they are laid out correctly in timeline and previewed correctly on the stage, or browser. This can happen when animation delays and ‘Pause’ events are used in the timeline.
To explore, let’s create an animation that shows “Yea” in a text box first, then pauses it. When a page background, a white background is clicked, the timeline starts playing to show ”Nay” text as “Yea” goes away. Download
test-overlap.zip
to see to see the actual example file.
When it is previewed on Chrome browser, it shows as this:
If you preview this on Safari, when the animation is paused, Nay is already displayed and overlapping with Yea before any user interaction happens.
Let’s try to resolve this overlap.
Approach - Removing the animation delays
When the overlap happens, let’s remove the animation delays for all the animated layers. In order to do so, 1) Move the playhead all the way back to 0.1s., 2) Select all the layers that have animation delays, 3) Hit F6 function key to add keyframes, 4) Move the keyframes to 0 until they appear as half diamond shapes.
This should fix the overlapping preview issue on Safari. After adjusting the animations, please test on all the browsers to verify adjustment works on all.
Page animation control
Many users have asked how to play the animation through pages, then make it go back to the first page and pause the animation at a certain point. It would also be great if we could control how long the animation plays and then pauses.
Let’s say you wanted to set up three pages in your creative and play the animation in the following page order. You want each page to play the animation for 2sec, then go to the next page until all the pages are cycled through twice.
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 1 (end)
Approach - setTimeout event as a custom action
We can achieve this by adding a ‘setTimeout’ event for the timeline. Let’s walk through this process by using this example file
pages.zip
. Please download it and open pages.html file.
The example file is a three page ad file that has timeline animation on each page. Once you’ve downloaded it, preview it in your browser to see how it works. Now let’s look at the details.
On page1 we’ve added an event marker at 2 second mark to go to next page, page1_1. We’ve also added a timeline label “end” where we would like to end the whole animation after it’s gone through the page changes two times.
If you look at the events panel, the event that changes the page is shown as page1>event-1>GotoPage>pagedeck(page1_1)
Let’s take a look at the second page (page1_1) which is similar. Again, there is animation in the timeline and a timeline event marker added at the 2 second mark. If you look at the events panel, this event is displayed as page1_1>event-2>GotoPage>pagedeck(page1_2). When the animation plays on this page, it simply executes the timeline event at 2 seconds and goes to the next page.
Finally, let’s open the last page (page1_2). This is where we’ve added a custom action to control how long the animation plays until the ‘gotoAndPause’ event gets fired.
If we look at the timeline on page3, we see an event marker at the 2 second mark, just like the other pages. In the Events panel, you can see that there are two events associated with event three. The first has a custom action.
Note: 6000ms = 6s
We’ve added “setTimeout” as a function name, and created the following code:
setTimeout(nextPage, 6000);
function nextPage() {
gwd.actions.timeline.gotoAndPause('page1', 'end');
}
When this event gets fired, it will trigger a 6 second timeout, and then the page will go to ‘end’ label on ‘page1’ and pause the animation there. This six seconds represents the time it will take for the animation to cycle through another time. If we wanted the animation to cycle through the 3 pages three times, we’d have to set the timer to 12 seconds.
If you look at the events panel, you can see that there’s a second event attatched to event-3: page1_2>event-3>GotoPage>pagedeck(page1). This simply makes the page go back to the first page. It is important to remember that ‘setTimeout’ event has to be added before ‘GotoPage’ event, because ‘setTimeout’ should be executed before the page goes to the next page.
Now we can see how it works. Each page plays the animation for 2 sec and goes to the next page.On page 3 (page1_2), ‘setTimeout’ event gets fired, and the animation then continues to play normally for 6 seconds, when it then goes to the label “end” on page1 and pauses the animation there. As a result, all the pages are cycled through twice and the animation ends at the label “end”.
Using custom actions like this example will give you more control over your creative and its interactive content. Custom actions are saved in your file and you can reuse them for other elements if you like.
Final Thoughts
As developers we understand that it can be frustrating to deal with small differences and rendering issues on different browsers, platforms and devices. The Google Web designer team is working hard to solve those from the authoring side as we continue to release new feature enhancements. Please be sure to download the zip files and try the techniques in this article. We would also like to hear from you, so please send us your feedback and issue reports in our community forum!
Posted by Mariko, Test Engineer
Popular Questions from the Google Web Designer Forum
Monday, April 25, 2016
The Google Web Designer Community Forum
is a resource that our customers use to ask questions, provide answers and reach out to our team directly. If you haven’t visited the community forum yet, feel free to check it out. It contains lots of useful information, tips, questions, etc. from users like yourself.
In this blog post, we’ll highlight some of our frequently asked questions from the forum.
How do I make an asset appear at a specific time during my animation?
For example, let’s say we have the following file, a simple animation spanning two keyframes where a yellow DIV animates from left to right:
When this animation finishes, we want to display another asset, say a blue DIV. Many users will often add the blue DIV at the last keyframe and be unpleasantly surprised that this new DIV appears in the first keyframe as well.
Any time you add a new element to a document, it's present in the document at all times, however, we can control when the element “appears” by setting its display, visibility, or opacity styles. Of these styles, only opacity is animatable, so let’s cover that first. We’ll also cover using the display or visibility styles to achieve this effect a bit later.
Approach 1 - Animating opacity from 0 to 1 between two keyframes
First, let’s select the element in the first keyframe and use the Properties panel to set its opacity to 0.
The element should now be invisible throughout the entire animation.
Now we’ll Insert a new keyframe at the end and change the duration between the last keyframe and the keyframe right before it to 0.01 seconds.
So far, the element has opacity 0 throughout the animation.
Select the element in the last keyframe and use the Properties panel to set its opacity to 1.
The blue DIV’s opacity is now animating from a value of 0 at the first keyframe to a value of 1 at the last keyframe. The middle keyframe has an interpolated value for its opacity.
Next, select the blue DIV in middle keyframe and use the Properties panel to set the opacity to 0 there as well.
If we preview the resulting animation in the browser, we can see the blue DIV’s opacity is now animating from a value of 0 at the first keyframe to a value of 0 still at the middle keyframe. The animation duration between the first and middle keyframes is 0.5 seconds. The blue DIV’s opacity then quickly animates from 0 to 1 because the duration between the middle and last keyframes is 0.01 seconds, making it seem like the blue DIV appears after 0.5 seconds.
Let’s recap the steps on how to make an element appear at a specific point in time in an existing animation:
Select the first keyframe/thumbnail in the animation.
Add the new element at the first keyframe/thumbnail.
Select the element at the first keyframe/thumbnail and use the Properties panel to set its opacity to 0.
Add a keyframe at the time you want the element to “appear’ (let’s call it time
t
). Its opacity will still be 0 at time
t
.
Add another keyframe right before time t (let’s call it time t’) and set the duration between
t’
and
t
to 0.01s.
Select the element at time
t
and set its opacity to 1.
Select the element at time
t’
and set its opacity to 0.
Download
timeline_animate_opacity.zip
to see the final result.
Approach 2 - Using Timeline Event Markers, CSS Panel, and the Events panel to show the element at the desired time
As an alternative, you can also achieve the same results by using display or visibility styles:
Select the blue DIV and use the Properties panel to give it an id (let’s use ‘bluediv’ for the id in the example below).
Select ‘bluediv’ in the first keyframe and open the CSS panel.
Add the style: visibility: hidden
Switch the Timeline to Advanced mode.
Move the Timeline’s playhead to the time you want the element to be visible and add a new Timeline event marker by clicking on the diamond icon in the Timeline panel’s Events row.
Double-click on the newly added diamond event marker to bring up the Events dialog and add the following action for that event. Action: CSS -> Set styles -> ID of the element -> ‘+’ button to add the CSS style visibility: visible.
We can now preview to view the resulting animation in the browser.
Download
timeline_css_event.zip
to see the final result.
Can I use external JavaScript libraries in Google Web Designer?
Yes, you can! In fact, external JavaScript files are often used in ads. You can verify this by creating a new banner file and viewing the folder that you created the file in. In the example below, we’ve named a file ‘using_external_js’ and then browsed to its location. You will see some JavaScript files next to the HTML file, something like:
If we switch to Code view and look at the document’s head element, we’ll see script tags with their ‘src’ attributes set to these JavaScript file:
You can also add references to your own external JavaScript files in the head element after these script tags. The references can be relative paths from your HTML file, such as gwdpage_min.js in the example above, or they can be absolute paths to JavaScript libraries on the web, such as the link to DoubleClick studio’s Enabler library in the example above.
When you publish your ad, you have the option to include your JavaScript files directly in your HTML file rather than referencing them by selecting "Inline local files" in the publish dialog:
You may find commonly used JavaScript libraries on a CDN hosted by your publisher, similar to Enabler.js in the example above. For example, DoubleClick hosts common JavaScript libraries such as the popular
Greensock animation libraries
. Let’s use one of these libraries to add some interactivity to our ad.
In Code view we’ll add a script element to reference the library we want to use. For this example, we’ll add the following script element to the list of script elements in the head.
<script type="text/javascript" src="
https://s0.2mdn.net/ads/studio/cached_libs/tweenlite_1.18.0_56fa823cfbbef1c2f4d4346f0f0e6c3c_min.js
"></script>
Now let’s switch back to Design view and add a DIV element using the Tag tool.
We’ll then use the Properties panel to set a background color on it, in this example let’s use blue.
Once the color is set, we’ll also use the Properties panel to set the id to ‘bluediv’.
Next, Right-click on the element and select “Add event…” to bring up the Events dialog.
We can set up the event as follows:
Event: Mouse->click
Action: select Custom, and click on ‘+ Add custom action’ to bring up the Custom code section
In the ‘Custom code’ dialog, enter a name for the function (let’s name it ‘rotateDiv’) and add the following custom code: TweenLite.to('#bluediv', 1, {rotation: '+=360'});
Now, preview your file in the browser and click on the blue DIV. You'll notice on each click the blue DIV will rotate one full turn using Greensock’s TweenLite library.
Download
using_external_js.zip
to see the final result.
Closing Thoughts
Learning how to customize animation and utilize popular JavaScript libraries can be powerful tools in creating amazing, interactive content. Let us know what you create with Google Web Designer and please continue to provide feedback and comments in our
Community Forum
!
Posted by Nivesh, UX Engineer
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