WESLEY CHUN: Hey, developers.
Welcome to the "G Suite Dev Show."
I'm your host, Wesley Chun.
Today I'm joined by G Suite engineer Grant Timmerman, who's
going to help me show you how to enhance the Google Slides
experience for both presenters and audiences.
Grant, can we get a quick intro to add-ons?
GRANT TIMMERMAN: Sure.
Add-ons let you take popular GC apps,
such as Gmail, Google Sheets, Slides, Docs, or Forms,
and extend their functionality.
Add-ons give developers the ability
to integrate your apps with ours.
WESLEY CHUN: Add-ons are powered by Google Apps Script,
a customized server-side flavor of JavaScript that
gives your apps controlled access to G Suite data
and other Google and external services.
Check out the intro video if you're new to Apps Script.
Or, if you already know Apps Script,
check out our first video on Slides add-ons.
GRANT TIMMERMAN: Whether you're attending a presentation
or delivering one, sometimes it's
good to know how far along you are.
The problem is that Google Slides itself
doesn't have a progress bar.
So let's add one.
Let's get to the computer, where Wes will walk you
through the add-on.
WESLEY CHUN: Thanks, Grant.
By the way, the code is also available at the progress bar
source code link.
So feel free to follow along.
Let's get started.
At the top are the variables for an arbitrary progress bar
ID, as well as the desired pixel height, and finally a handle
to the current presentation.
The first pair of short functions
form the boilerplate necessary to designate
this Apps Script as an add-on and what shows up
in the add-on menu, toggling the creation
or removal of the progress bars on the slides.
The Create Bars function adds progress bars to each slide,
and similarly Delete Bars removes them.
Both of these functions loop through each slide,
either creating the progress bar rectangles or removing them.
When adding them, Create Bars calculates
the correct percentage, so the rectangle
added to the bottom of each slide
accurately represents how far along it
is in the presentation.
The Bar ID is used to flag the progress bar rectangles
so that Delete Bars removes only those
and not rectangles that are actually
part of the slide content.
You put hours into this presentation,
so obviously you wouldn't want this feature
to mess around with your current masterpiece, right?
And using the add-on is just as simple.
Add the code to the script editor
for any Google Slides presentation for which you
have edit access.
You'll see the show-and-hide progress bar menu items
and can use them as if Google Slides already
had this feature built in.
Let's scroll down so we could see the progress bars
as I add them then move to another slide
so you can see them disappear when I remove them.
To distribute your add-on to others, you must publish it.
Users can install published add-ons directly
to their presentations without knowing or seeing
any of your code.
This demo shows how you can add core functionality
to your favorite G Suite apps.
And best of all, it doesn't have to take too many lines of code.
Thanks for making this cool add-on, Grant.
GRANT TIMMERMAN: Sure, Wes.
To dig deeper into the code and read more about the add-on,
check out the Quickstart pages in the docs.
WESLEY CHUN: To learn more about other add-ons,
like for Docs, Sheets, or Forms, check out the Add-ons Overview
page.
GRANT TIMMERMAN: Outside of Apps Script,
you can write regular web or mobile apps using the REST API.
Check out the other developer videos
which show you how to use Apps Script or the API
to integrate with Google Slides.
WESLEY CHUN: This is just one of the many ideas of how
you can extend G Suite apps.
We invite you to enhance this example.
For instance, I find the progress bar's default color
a bit too light.
Can we darken them?
Well, the rectangle's color is called the fill.
So your hint is look for the getFill and setSolidFill
methods.
GRANT TIMMERMAN: A progress bar is
a great feature for both presenters
as well as the audience.
And this short example shows you,
one, that you can add missing features and two,
you don't need a full blown app to implement one.
The sky's the limit to what you can do with add-ons.
WESLEY CHUN: Glad you could join us today.
And special thanks to Grant for helping out.
This is Wesley Chun.
I'll see you upstairs in the G Suite.
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