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Sandvox 2 features major overhaul, Objects Menu, more
Sandvox by Kareila Software will celebrate its fifth birthday this year. The festivities begin with Sandvox 2.0, a major update to the WYSIWYG Web editor for the Mac. With more than 5 dozen new or improved features, such as the super-handy Objects Menu and full HTML5 compliance, Sandvox 2 is ready for weekend Web warriors and small business owners alike. Here's my look at Sandvox 2. UI Web editors like Sandvox are meant for those who wish to create websites without touching HTML. That's a large number of users, like new parents, baseball coaches and small business owners. The common thread among them is the need for simplicity. Fortunately, Sandvox 2 meets that need. The main UI window is familiar to anyone who's used iTunes, Pages or iWeb. On the left-hand side you'll find thumbnails of pages. On the right is the page you're currently working on. A customizable toolbar allows easy access to your favorite functions. Working on a page, be it a blog, gallery, form, etc. is as easy as editing text. Simply type (or paste rich text) and Sandvox handles the code for you. Adding interesting elements -- what Kareila calls Objects -- is also a breeze, as this article will point out later. Also, an inspector lets you fine-tune page elements. Adding YouTube videos, Amazon product links and more is drag-and-drop easy. As for looks, Sandvox 2 ships with about 60 themes, while third-party theme developers extend the options even further. In short, Sandvox 2 looks good, and the UI is simple enough for its intended audience.
Sandvox 1.5 is now available
Sandvox is the WYSIWYG web editor from Karelia that's won praises from users and the design community (including an Apple Design Award) alike. You can read our previous coverage here.This week, Karelia has released version 1.5, which offers a slew of changes. You can use Sandvox to publish to any webhost (including FTP, SFTP and MobileMe) or create a blog. The pro version lets you edit the HTML and both the pro and basic version include attractive templates that you'll actually want to use. Changes to version 1.5 include Major improvements to media processing, making it easier than ever to create and publish multimedia and media-intensive sites Improvements to all pagelets, including an enhanced Contact Form and a brand new YouTube pagelet Seven all-new designs, plus enhancements to other designs, bringing the total to 50 New blogging features, including a Collection Archives pagelet to better manage and display older entries, automatic navigation links between entries, and "continue reading" links to better manager longer entries There's much more, and you can read the full release notes here. As we said, Sandvox is a very nice tool for people who want to put up a page or site with no fuss. Sandvox requires Mac OS 10.4 or later, is a Universal Binary and comes in both pro ($79US) and standard ($49US) versions. Version 1.5 is a free upgrade for registered users.
Sandvox public beta available
A few years ago, Karelia software released the great Watson, an internet search utility for Mac OS X. Many loved it, and I still use it all the time, in fact. Shortly after that successful release, Apple produced a version of its own Sherlock that bore a strikingly uncanny resemblance to Watson. Eventually, Karelia discontinued development of Watson and sold the technology to Sun Microsystems.More recently, Karelia has begun work on a WYSIWYG web editor for the Mac called Sandvox, and limited beta testing was begun in October. It really looks great and we've been watching its development for a while now. Today, however, the folks at Karelia are getting that sinking feeling all over again.With the rumor swirling that Steve will introduce a new application called "iWeb" at tomorrow's keynote, Karelia have made the public beta of Sandvox available today, a little earlier than they had initially planned. I've only played with it very briefly so far, but some of the templates really look great. Good luck to Karelia.
