Impressions of using Google Producer

There was already a review of the possibilities of Google Media for publishers and readers who use this service to read sites on mobile devices. Let us briefly recall the main features by quoting the official publication : “Now all owners of mobile devices based on Android and iOS can download the Russian version of the Google Media application (Google Currents) and get free access to online publications, including Russian ones. And for publishers, we have developed a special Google Producer platform that allows you to upload your own texts, videos, images and much more into the application. ”, At the end of which you are invited to test the application and share your impressions.

Unfortunately, there is still no detailed manual on how to use all this. Let's try to share some impressions and experiences using Google Producer. As it turned out, it is quite a powerful tool, with a large number of tricks and features, as well as use cases.

Despite the statement that you can read Russian-language online publications, in fact there are not so many of them, so you can have time to create an interesting Russian-language edition and get a decent number of subscribers because there are a lot of people who want to read online. Moreover, the application allows you to read your publication without connecting a mobile device to the Internet.

A description of the features of using Google Producer will be based on the experience of creating a Russian-language edition of the " Student Lab " for mobile devices. Subscribe and see what the publication looks like here . The screen with the display of the initial page for Android devices is shown below. Moreover, if your Google account is used by you and on your mobile device, your subscription will be very convenient and fast.
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To create, download and process content will have to use Google Chrome and need a Google account. Publisher interface is well thought out and understandable. You can create sections: Feed, Articles, Photos, Video Channel, Rss-section updates from social networks (in particular, Google+). In addition, there are settings that allow you to organize the structure of these sections, their sorting. There are standard home page templates that are well thought out and adapted for different screen sizes.

The main advantage is that you can immediately test how your publication and your publication will look on the screens of different devices with different sizes: Android, Tablet, iPhone, iPad. It does not take a while to update the changes, so changing the page display settings and experimentation is not particularly annoying.

Particular attention should be paid to the section, which will be formed on the basis of your site’s RSS feed. Google Producer requires verification of your rights to use the added channel. And if, you do not confirm these rights, then you will be issued a warning. Nevertheless, the transmission of information from the channel will be carried out without obstacles. But there is also a fly in the ointment: there is no transition to the full article from the announcement, so the link must be made independently.

There is a great opportunity to add authors with limited rights, which gives you the opportunity to retain control of the publication. This is convenient if your publication has many authors. They can only publish their materials, and you can define in which sections.

Among the shortcomings, we can mention the fact that in some fields (for example, in the name field of the author) of the published article, you can insert tags, for example, links and this link will work on the page itself, but the code will be displayed on the main page. And also could not detect the preview mode. Your publication will be seen immediately, and you will have to edit it after publication, if errors are detected. But below is a way to get around this problem.

One of the most interesting features is the ability to import material for publication from the ePub format. At the same time, the ePub structure is preserved and you immediately get the ready structure of your mobile edition. Hence the conclusion: using this feature, you can keep your mobile publication in the form of a journal in ePub format. And as the information in the publication is updated, re-publish this ePub document. This turned out to be much more convenient than posting article by article in the publisher’s office. If you use an offline editor to create an ePub journal, then you only need to connect to the Internet to download this file.

This approach has one more positive side: you will be able to read and edit everything in advance. Publication of materials from the publisher's office provokes errors, and you can see them, as a rule, after publication. It is very difficult and time consuming to read and correct in small and inconvenient forms.

Reading the publication on a mobile device is very convenient, although the design is standardized, but it looks great. navigation is well thought out. Moreover, you can customize the styles yourself if you have basic knowledge of html, css.

Conclusion. Google Producer is a very promising tool for quickly creating mobile versions for your website or offline magazine. But it can also be used as a personal blog intended for reading on mobile devices. And even for downloading ePub books to a mobile device.