Google Releases a Couple of Website Templates to Spur Google TV Development

Google TV hasn't taken off, not yet Google hopes, but the company is not letting go so easily and is gearing up for a second assault on the market. In the meantime, Google is encouraging developers to take Google TV into account when designing their sites and is now even providing a couple templates to help them get started.

Google says that the templates are intended specifically for video content, but are suitable for photos or other types of media files.

To ensure that as many people as possible can use the templates, there are two versions of each, one in Flash and one built using open web technologies.

"Google TV enables developers to build powerful websites using the same technologies they already work with. These include HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and Flash. While existing websites can be displayed in Google TV, the user experience isn’t always ideal within the context of a living room," Steve Hines and Daniels Lee from the Google TV Developer Relations Team wrote.

"We previously provided a guide for optimizing websites for TV, and today we’re releasing several templates and a UI library to make it easier for developers to build optimized sites," they announced.

For now, there are two website templates, each in two flavors. The first template makes it easier to browse through several categories and selecting the videos you want to watch.

After picking a video, you get to a playback page with the actual video, playback controls, a short description, the possibility of vote up or down a video and other similar tools.

The second template offers a single page view. All the videos, or the other media content, are listed in thumbnail form on top and the selected one is displayed below.

Both templates are available in both a HTML5 and a Flash version. Google is also releasing the Google TV Web UI Library which enables web developers to add the possibility to navigate a site using a remote control, rather than the classic keyboard and mouse setup.