Try AdWords & Google Ads API Web Navi

Have you ever wanted to see the AdWords API and Google Ads API services or reference pages relevant to the new Google Ads experience web page you’re browsing? Now you can easily do so by using our new Chrome extension, the AdWords & Google Ads API Web Navi!

How does it work?
The tool shows the AdWords API and Google Ads API resources (e.g., guides, service reference pages, report references) related to the web page of the new Google Ads experience you are visiting. Just choose the tab for the API of interest to view the relevant resources.

For example, in the animation below, a user has clicked on the extension’s icon while browsing the Ad groups page of the new Google Ads experience. The extension then shows some relevant resources for the AdWords API, e.g., Objects, Methods, and Services, AdGroupService, and Adgroup Performance Report. When the user clicks on the Google Ads API (Beta) tab, its resources are shown instead.

Below are the screenshots of both tabs:
The AdWords API Resources The Google Ads API Resources


Resources in each tab are divided into sections — Guides, Services, and Reports for the AdWords API, and Guides, Services, and Fields for the Google Ads API.

In each AdWords API and Google Ads API release, we will update the tool to reflect the addition, update, and deletion of resources. Note that for services, the tool always shows the latest version of the API.

If you have any questions or comments, please post on our forum or add your comments directly in the Reviews tab of the extension page.
 - , Google Ads API Team

Flutter Release Preview 2: Pixel-Perfect on iOS

Posted by the Flutter Team at Google

Flutter is Google's new mobile app toolkit for crafting beautiful native interfaces on iOS and Android in record time. Today, during the keynote of Google Developer Days in Shanghai, we are announcing Flutter Release Preview 2: our last major milestone before Flutter 1.0.

This release continues the work of completing core scenarios and improving quality, beginning with our initial beta release in February through to the availability of our first Release Preview earlier this summer. The team is now fully focused on completing our 1.0 release.

What's New in Release Preview 2

The theme for this release is pixel-perfect iOS apps. While we designed Flutter with highly brand-driven, tailored experiences in mind, we heard feedback from some of you who wanted to build applications that closely follow the Apple interface guidelines. So in this release we've greatly expanded our support for the "Cupertino" themed controls in Flutter, with an extensive library of widgets and classes that make it easier than ever to build with iOS in mind.

A reproduction of the iOS Settings home page, built with Flutter

Here are a few of the new iOS-themed widgets added in Flutter Release Preview 2:

And more have been updated, too:

As ever, the Flutter documentation is the place to go for detailed information on the Cupertino* classes. (Note that at the time of writing, we were still working to add some of these new Cupertino widgets to the visual widget catalog).

We've made progress to complete other scenarios also. Taking a look under the hood, support has been added for executing Dart code in the background, even while the application is suspended. Plugin authors can take advantage of this to create new plugins that execute code upon an event being triggered, such as the firing of a timer, or the receipt of a location update. For a more detailed introduction, read this Medium article, which demonstrates how to use background execution to create a geofencing plugin.

Another improvement is a reduction of up to 30% in our application package size on both Android and iOS. Our minimal Flutter app on Android now weighs in at just 4.7MB when built in release mode, a savings of 2MB since we started the effort — and we're continuing to identify further potential optimizations. (Note that while the improvements affect both iOS and Android, you may see different results on iOS because of how iOS packages are built).

Growing Momentum

As many new developers continue to discover Flutter, we're humbled to note that Flutter is now one of the top 50 active software repositories on GitHub:

We declared Flutter "production ready" at Google I/O this year; with Flutter getting ever closer to the stable 1.0 release, many new Flutter applications are being released, with thousands of Flutter-based apps already appearing in the Apple and Google Play stores. These include some of the largest applications on the planet by usage, such as Alibaba (Android, iOS), Tencent Now (Android, iOS), and Google Ads (Android, iOS). Here's a video on how Alibaba used Flutter to build their Xianyu app (Android, iOS), currently used by over 50 million customers in China:

We take customer satisfaction seriously and regularly survey our users. We promised to share the results back with the community, and our most recent survey shows that 92% of developers are satisfied or very satisfied with Flutter and would recommend Flutter to others. When it comes to fast development and beautiful UIs, 79% found Flutter extremely helpful or very helpful in both reaching their maximum engineering velocity and implementing an ideal UI. And 82% of Flutter developers are satisfied or very satisfied with the Dart programming language, which recently celebrated hitting the release milestone for Dart 2.

Flutter's strong community growth can be felt in other ways, too. On StackOverflow, we see fast growing interest in Flutter, with lots of new questions being posted, answered and viewed, as this chart shows:

Number of StackOverflow question views tagged with each of four popular UI frameworks over time

Flutter has been open source from day one. That's by design. Our goal is to be transparent about our progress and encourage contributions from individuals and other companies who share our desire to see beautiful user experiences on all platforms.

Getting Started

How do you upgrade to Flutter Release Preview 2? If you're on the beta channel already, it just takes one command: 

$ flutter upgrade

You can check that you have Release Preview 2 installed by running flutter --version from the command line. If you have version 0.8.2 or later, you have everything described in this post.

If you haven't tried Flutter yet, now is the perfect time, and flutter.io has all the details to download Flutter and get started with your first app.

When you're ready, there's a whole ecosystem of example apps and code snippets to help you get going. You can find samples from the Flutter team in the flutter/samples repo on GitHub, covering things like how to use Material and Cupertino, approaches for deserializing data encoded in JSON, and more. There's also a curated list of samples that links out to some of the best examples created by the Flutter community.

You can also learn and stay up to date with Flutter through our hands-on videos, newsletters, community articles and developer shows. There are discussion groups, chat rooms, community support, and a weekly online hangout available to you to help you along the way as you build your application. Release Preview 2 is our last release preview. Next stop: 1.0!

Showcasing the best of digitally savvy Aussie business

From dog grooming to mastectomy bras, Australian businesses of all shapes and sizes are using digital tools to reach new audiences. Yesterday, some of these amazing businesses shared their stories at the Australian Chamber Business Leaders Summit at Parliament House in Canberra. 

The Summit brings together key business representatives from across Australia to meet with leaders and policymakers, and have the chance to hear from business owners how the internet is helping their business succeed. 

Business owner Jill Tucker from Erilan Mastectomy Collection - a business which offers mastectomy wear choices and support after breast surgery - shared her story about setting up a business and getting started online. 

Based in Wagga Wagga, Jill started her business to help fit women in rural Australia with prosthetics, bras, swimwear and clothing after they’ve had breast surgery.


Jill now has customers across Australia with 90 per cent of sales through the e-commerce site. Business champion Basil Karam from Life Interiors spoke about the importance of “learning to be surprised” even after 10 years of selling furniture online. Dog-grooming guru Margaret Hennessy, CEO of DOGUE, told the audience how digital propels the growth of new stores as her business expands across Australia. Digital tools are taking Australian businesses to new levels, but we know that more than 90% of businesses are not taking full advantage of digital tools. If you’re a small business that wants to gain new digital skills and learn make the most of the web - find an event near you (hint: We’ll be in Adelaide on 25-26 September) or check out The Digital Garage online to get free access to the complete training resources!

Posted by Richard Flanagan, Head of Business Marketing, Google Australia

Beta Channel Update for Desktop

The beta channel has been updated to 70.0.3538.22 for Windows, Mac, and, Linux.

A full list of changes in this build is available in the log. Interested in switching release channels?  Find out how here. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug. The community help forum is also a great place to reach out for help or learn about common issues.

Abdul Syed
Google Chrome

Announcing v201809 of the AdWords API

Today we’re announcing the release of AdWords API v201809. Here are the highlights:

  • More available text in ads. Several ad types now have additional fields, and an increased character count of 90 characters for descriptions. Check out the release notes for more details.
  • Traffic split in trials. The new trafficSplitType gives you greater control over how traffic is split in your trials.
  • Conversion reporting. The new ConversionAttributionEventType field in the CAMPAIGN_PERFORMANCE_REPORT allows you to segment AllConversions and related metrics by event type (impression or interaction). In addition, the new ConversionAdjustment and ConversionAdjustmentLagBucket fields allow you to determine if conversion adjustments were applied and segment metrics by the number of days between the impression and either conversions or adjustments.

If you’re using v201802 of the AdWords API, please note that it will be sunset on January 30, 2019. We encourage you to skip v201806 and migrate straight to v201809. If you're using v201806, be aware it's now marked deprecated and will be sunset on March 26, 2019.

As with every new version of the AdWords API, please carefully review all changes in the release notes and the v201809 migration guide. The updated client libraries and code examples will be published within the next 48 hours.

If you have any questions or need help with migration, please contact us via the forum. 

- Josh Radcliff on behalf of the AdWords API Team.

Dev Channel Update for Chrome OS

The Dev channel has been updated to 70.0.3538.22 (Platform version: 11021.19.0) for most Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of bug fixes, security updates and feature enhancements. A list of changes can be found here.

If you find new issues, please let us know by visiting our forum or filing a bug. Interested in switching channels? Find out how. You can submit feedback using ‘Report an issue...’ in the Chrome menu (3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of the browser).

Geo Hsu


Google Chrome

New intelligent file suggestions and organization with Priority in Drive Beta

We’re adding a new page in Google Drive’s left-hand navigation panel that helps you find and take action on the right Drive files at the right time. This Priority page uses machine learning to suggest files you might need to work on and has “workspaces” to help you organize files. Priority in Drive is initially available in beta. See below for more details.

See files and comments that need attention

The goal of Priority is to put your most important files in one place. Using machine learning, we identify the files that are high-priority for you to work on. When you open the page, you’ll see those files, along with comments and suggested actions. You’ll be able to reply to some comments directly through the Drive interface and open full documents with one click. This will help you spend less time searching for content and more time doing work that matters.

Use workspaces to organize files without moving them

The Priority page also organizes files into workspaces. These let you gather a private set of working files for ongoing easy access. Adding files to a workspace doesn’t affect their storage location or permissions—it just aggregates files to help you find them faster. Our studies show most users only work with around 10–20 files at any given time. Workspaces help make sure you can get to those files more efficiently. To build your workspace, you can use Drive's intelligent file suggestions or add files manually.


With the Priority page, Drive is helping you save time and focus on what matters by intelligently surfacing and organizing the files you may need in any given moment.

Apply to join the Priority in Drive Beta

Priority in Drive is launching initially in beta. Admins can see more details, review the eligibility requirements, and apply for their domains to join at this link.



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Real-time presence in Microsoft Office to become available October 17th

On October 17th, 2018, we’ll begin rolling out real-time presence for Microsoft Office files in Google Drive to all G Suite domains. Admin controls for real-time presence are available today.

This feature, included in Drive File Stream, will help you avoid version conflicts when editing Microsoft Office files in Google Drive. Real-time presence will let users know if another user is editing a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file stored in Drive File Stream, in real time. This feature will start rolling out to end users on October 17th.

Avoid version conflicts when editing Microsoft Office files in Drive

Real-time presence will check to see if someone else is viewing or editing a Microsoft Office file while you have it open. It’ll alert you and them to help avoid version conflicts. When conflicts do occur, it’ll help you resolve them with a side-by-side view of the document versions, allowing you to easily merge them into one up-to-date file. For more details and to fully understand the feature:



Admin controls available now

Admins can choose whether to make real-time presence available to their organizations. Admin controls are live today and on by default. Real-time presence can be disabled for an entire domain or for individual organizational units (OUs) within a domain. To change the setting, go to Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Features and Applications > Allow users to enable real-time presence in Microsoft Office from Drive File Stream in the Admin console.

For more granular control, admins can also deploy a configuration setting to enable or disable real-time presence in Microsoft Office on a per-machine basis.

End user feature available after October 17th

On October 17th, Drive File Stream users will begin to see an educational message when opening Office files stored in Drive File Stream. This message (pictured below), explains that real-time presence helps users see who is editing Microsoft Office files stored in Drive. After opting in to this feature, users will begin to see real-time presence status indicators in the bottom right-hand corner of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint windows that are focused in the foreground.
On macOS, enabling real-time presence may require users to grant accessibility permissions. Additionally, some users may be asked to confirm their identity before using real-time presence, by logging in with their G Suite account. Starting October 17th, employees at G Suite organizations will be able to visit our Help Center to learn more about how to use real-time presence.

Launch Details
Release track:
  • Admin console setting launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release today
  • End user feature included in version of Drive File Stream that will become available to both Rapid Release and Schedule Release on October 17th

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
G Suite Updates blog: Avoid version conflicts when editing Microsoft Office files in Drive
Demo video: Real-time presence in Microsoft Office
Help Center: Use work or school files on your computer with Drive File Stream


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