Google Pages

Thursday, 23 February 2006

One more from the google stables - Google Pages.

Google pages is a WYSIWYG web pages builder cum hosting service. This kind of services have been around for a long time.(remember your first Geocities pages?). So, what's new under the sun?

First looks:

  • The WYSIWYG editor is a good starting point for most people.
  • The WYSIWYG editor retains inline styling after editing, this is a good thing.
  • produces decent HTML code, but not really W3C compliant.
  • works only with Firefox and IE (no opera support yet)
  • you get http://yourgmailid.googlepages.com url
  • 100MB hosting space (without ads)
  • no mention of bandwidth usage
  • uploading files is a breeze. files are uploaded to the root of your domain. So, linking to images becomes that much easier.
  • more than 40 themes available
  • select from 4 different layout schemes
  • layout customisation not yet in sight. Perhaps they can just borrow these
  • Intelligent URL inserter. clicking on a link in the page allows you to edit it or visit it. pretty nifty.
  • Image insertion is a breeze. Upload imaged automatically show up in the Image dialog box. Allow for image sizing. good!
  • The AJAXY bits are fast to give a desktop application feel to the whole app. very neat indeed. *The pages are saved automatically every now and then, just like the gmail drafts.

So, what does it all mean?

  • bad news for small web hosting providers
  • good news for end users who want to put up simple webpages

Whats missing?

  • ability to add RSS feeds/OPML to the page (eg: show off your flickr photos, del.icio.us bookmarks, cocomments?)
  • integration with google base
  • import calendars (iCal?)

Note: You can sign up for Google Pages if you have a Gmail account already. If you need an invite, Contact me

Update:

  • looks like they got dugg and slashdotted. So, they are not accepting new accounts. Check back in couple of hours...