I have a site which uses Google Maps, and ReCaptcha APIs; since GDPR about cookies is changed (and now is more complex), how can I be compliant with new policy?
Thank you very much
Get consent before loading the iframe/JS script from Google Maps & Google reCAPTCHA.
GDPR is not about cookies; the word is not even mentioned. The applicable law is the EU's electronic privacy directive (EPD) of 2002; GDPR is about data protection and raised the underlying standards that the EPD uses. In most ways that matter, GDPR has simplified and clarified what needs to be done. The "complexity" arises from companies that are having to use increasingly obtuse methods to try to work around what they are legally required to do.
There is essentially no safe way to use either Google maps or recaptcha while remaining compliant with either law. Nearly everyone using them is doing so illegally, and hoping that the relevant regulators will continue to do nothing about it. The best way to be compliant is to use a different service that doesn't suffer the same problems.
Related
When changes are imminent to the API version, are admins/devs notified in advance via email or some other system?
Some companies I have found use twitter, hitch, or nothing at all to notify users of changes that may be deprecated. My goal is for us to stay on top of API changes so we never experience breakage.
I don't think this is the case. When Google makes changes to the Drive API (and to others), most of the time it is written on the Relase Notes.
There is also the Migration Page Guide where Google lists what's new and what's deprecated. Google also writes in red letters the outdated functionalities in their guides. Another way is they update devs is to announce it during conferences like Google I/O.
And lastly, the support page tells us devs to post questions here on Stackoverflow.
I looked at my 'Execution Hints' and saw this.
"Chart API is deprecated."
I copied the chart codes directly from here
https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/charts/column-chart-builder
What am I to change it to if it is deprecated?
I use the charts as images and send it to emails.
You are correct Google has Deprecated Image Charts. It was officially deprecated as of April 20, 2012 as far as I know there is nothing by Google to replace it.
you will need to find some other third party tool to suit your needs or create your own.
It appears it will stop working on April 20,2015
Deprecation Policy
Google will announce if it intends to discontinue or make backwards
incompatible changes to this API or Service. Google will use
commercially reasonable efforts to continue to operate those Google
Chart Tools versions and features identified at
http://developers.google.com/chart/chart-api-list without these
changes until April 20, 2015, unless (as Google determines in its
reasonable good faith judgment):
required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a
change in applicable law or relationship), or doing so could create a
security risk or substantial economic or material technical burden.
The above policy is the "Deprecation Policy."
I think the original poster is referring to a different Charting service. This one being the one used with UiService in GAS.
UiService is the only place that Charts can be used. And since UiService was deprecated as of Dec 11, 2014, it makes sense that UiService only features, such as Charts, would also be deprecated.
It it likely to be possible to use Google Charts with the new enhancements to the HtmlService. The last time I tried to use Google Charts with HtmlService, it mostly worked. I have not tried since they introduced the IFrame based Sandbox mode.
The UiService set of Charts was a subset of the Google Charts stuff (which itself I think it just a free serving of the charting stuff built into GWT).
So while how you set things up will be different, you should have feature parity once you migrate your application from UiService to HtmlService.
The Google Image Charts are older, static charts, and that does appear to be going away. But again, that is just one small portion of what Google Charts as an offering is.
The situation:
I'm currently creating an advanced Google Apps application which I would like to release later on in the Google Add-On store (It's an Add-On for Google Spreadsheets).
My application has since the beginning been developed using the UiInstance service for creating the User Interface. It works swell and I'm really happy with the results.
However, if I consult the Add-On style guide this is mentioned:
Use the add-ons CSS package in your HTML service pages. (And don't use UI service to create a public add-on — it won't look as professional.)
Also, the UI service is marked as Experimental in the Google Apps Reference Guide, this might also be a problem for publicly releasing it (can anybody point me in the right direction to ask more information on this?)
The question; Does anybody know about the plans for the UI Service? Might this get deprecated in the (near) future? I've been looking for more information on this but I did not find it. Please keep in mind that your guess is as good as mine.
Should I start recreating my UI with the HTML Service or is there any future for the UI Service?
My personal opinion; I think the UI Service makes it a lot easier to create a User Interface, still having the possibility to adjust it as you wish.
You are perfectly right when you say "your guess is as good as mine" but I see at least 2 arguments that makes me think HTML Service is the way to go :
the "recommendation" about not using UiApp in add-on is not really a recommendation, it's definitely a requirement. They won't approve an add-on build with UiApp (and approval is also a mandatory step)
They provide a link to a Google static CSS sheet that will determine the "look and feel" of the add-ons for buttons, fonts and about all graphic elements used in the Ui so that, if ever they feel like changing something in the Ui, they have full control on it and don't rely on each app developer good will to update it. This would not be the case in UiApp of course.
And lastly, they stopped maintaining UiApp and deprecated all methods that were having issues, leaving it "as it is" so I guess the future is - at the least - uncertain...
I fully agree with you that when you know how to use UiApp it is fairly easy but I know also that this is more a personal point of view that not so much people share. If you are a "normal" web developer then HTML and JQuery are certainly more familiar and far more easy to use.
I guess (I know it's just a personal guess ;-) it's time to start your "mutation" to HTML Service, at least if your goal is to publish your apps.
Is it possible to embed an interactive Google Map in an email?
I know it is possible with static maps, but I'm starting to doubt if it is possible with interactive ones.
No.
I don't even know whether the map uses Javascript, Flash, Java, HTML5, or anything else, but I can still confidently say 'no'.
There's virtually no chance that your recipient's mail client will support it.
You might come across some mail clients (most likely webmails) that haven't blocked that kind of content, but that will almost certainly be an oversight on their part.
No decent mail software is going to support it, because the technologies involved are either complex or a security risk to the end user.
And even if some newer mail clients were to somehow provide support for it, you need to consider that many people have old email clients. It's commonly said that you have to design emails like it's 1999.
The best you will be able to do is include a link in your message, to a hosted map.
Is there any way to add a business with complete information (with address, geospatial location, categories, trading hours etc) to Google Places in a programmatic fashion?
We want to add new franchises to a listing of stores. Manual changes are too brittle, the bulk upload takes a long time to be confirmed and the standard Places API has only a very limited method on it. Am I missing something or is there no support for managing your own store listings via an API?
I don't think you're missing anything at this time. Support for that sort of thing is currently limited to what's documented at the link you provide, I believe.
The Places stuff is in the odd grey area where Google is kind of pushing it and promoting it, but also saying that it's just in Labs, it's just experimental, etc., so it may not have all the features you need.
There might be other ways to get your businesses into Google Maps, if your concern is Google Maps generally and not the Google Places stuff specifically. If they exist, they may have more fully featured API capabilities for updates. Or this might be a big dead end.
If this issue is closer to a big annoyance instead of a total dealbreaker, then the approach I'd recommend, if you can wait long enough, would be to implement what you can in the existing API, and keep an eye on the API docs to see if they add more capabilities in the coming months. Open a feature request for Places API in the issue tracker and maybe keep an eye on other features requests there, especially issue 2431.