The Karelia Blog | Sandvox | Karelia Software

Reason #3 to Switch to Version 2.8

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:19:10 -0700

Reason #3: More Social & Sharing Tools

With some trepidation, one of our expert developers, Warren, waded into the sea of "Social" to spearhead this part of the work for Sandvox 2.8. Keep in mind—at the time, he didn't really consider himself a "social media maven."

What did the team think of that, you ask? All the better. We wanted the Sandvox social tools to be smooth and easy to use. Who better to figure out what needed to be done than someone with an unclouded perspective.

So, since a good first step to solving any problem is really understanding it, Warren figured he'd have to "get social."

He fired up Sandvox and created a bunch of new websites for testing. After adding dozens of social buttons, feeds, plugins, and boxes all over them, he shared. Posts to Twitter, pages to Facebook, tweets to Google+: hashtags, pins, activities, recommendations, feeds, and +1s went to everybody! Eventually it all started to make sense. It was time to get to work.

Twitter was the first thing to update. Sandvox's original Tweet button tweeted just fine, but that's all it did. Twitter's since added some cool new buttons with different capabilities and we wanted to be sure our customers had those.

Reason #2 to Switch to Version 2.8

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:26:06 -0700

Reason #2: New Designs!

As we were putting every effort into making Sandvox 2.8 Retina-ready, watching photos and design elements come alive on our Retina displays, we realized we really wanted do everything we could to showcase the Retina capabilities we were carefully building into Sandvox.

While looking through "Sandvox Sites", our customer-submitted collection of websites built with Sandvox, we noticed that some really cool photography sites were using designs from our friends at Behind the Rabbit. In particular, their designs developed specifically for Sandvox 2: Hydrogen and Krypton.

Both of them are simple, clean designs with very modern looks that we thought worked especially well for displaying photo galleries and photos.

Hmmm.... How might something like these look in a Retina-ready Sandvox?

We contacted Behind the Rabbit to see if we could work with them on designs inspired by Hydrogen and Krypton.

After talking, we decided that the ideal situation would be to simply include a Retina-ready version of Hydrogen and a streamlined, Retina-ready version of Krypton directly in Sandvox. This would make Retina-ready versions of these great designs available to all Sandvox customers.

Reason #1 to Switch to Version 2.8 of Sandvox

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:06:28 -0700

We're particularly proud of the new 2.8 version of Sandvox that we just released today. We've been working on the nuts and bolts behind it for a long time. There are many reasons to switch to this version of Sandvox, and over the next few days we'll cover some of the them in a little more depth here.

Reason #1: Retina-readiness!

We saw the need for Sandvox to support the capabilities of Retina displays shortly after the third-generation iPad was released in Spring 2012, followed by the Retina MacBook Pro in June.

While it was pretty easy to get the internal icons and graphics of Sandvox itself updated to include Retina-quality graphics, our bigger goal was to make the websites that Sandvox creates look sharp on Retina displays.

So, we started the process of updating Sandvox's internal handling of graphics to no longer be tied to the one-point-equals-one-pixel model.

There were a few challenges to overcome, which is why it took a while to make it happen. HTML itself isn't quite ready for Retina displays, so we had to come up with a solution that would carefully balance the needs of viewers on classic and Retina displays, different browser capabilities, and even search engines — all while keeping bandwidth demands for the images down.

Helpful articles in our monthly newsletter

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:51:19 -0700

Have you signed up for our email newsletter yet? We've been sending out helpful articles on a monthly basis for a while now. Feel free to check out these recent topics online — but be sure to sign up for these articles (and occasional other announcements from Karelia).

Luring Googlers to Your Site — See how you can use the "page details" area to set the description of your page that Google-searchers will see. Do it right to lure these people over to your site!
Is your Content Hard-Working? — Think like your target audience so that you are sure to put the right content on your pages.
Switching Up the Sidebar — The sidebar of your website is a great way to share content across multiple pages of your site. Learn how to tweak the contents here.
Hey Cupid, Need a Hand? — A tour of a few of Sandvox's built-in objects, with a Valentine's Day backdrop.
New Year, New Skill: Code Injection vs. Raw HTML Objects — Learn the difference with these examples you can try yourself.
Managing Changes: Customizing the Site Menu with the Page inspector — Extend your site menu and customize the titles that your visitors see.

We're Honored to be one of Apple's Best of 2012

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:28:28 -0800

Yesterday Apple announced their Mac App Store Best of 2012, and we are elated to find that Sandvox was one of the honorees!

Such a great array of apps! Along with Day One, App of the Year, there were twenty titles including Sketch, Evernote, Coda 2, Things, and Tweetbot.

Thanks to Apple for including us on the list. And congratulations to all of the inductees!

Sandvox 2.7's Remote Host Setup Overhaul

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:59:07 -0800

We released Sandvox 2.7 last week, and one of the major changes is an overhaul of how you enter the hosting details for remote servers. Here's a nice screenshot:

You might be surprised just how many details are packed into this panel!

Autofill

When typing in your site's URL, Sandvox remembers the most recent setups you've published to, and suggests based on that. We've found it to be a really handy optimisation for anyone who frequently makes new sub-sites.

For new setups, the URL is then also used to take a quick guess at the server you'll be using for uploads.

Site URL Test

Also while entering your site's URL, Sandvox runs a quick check to see how it looks. If the domain's properly registered with a working web server, you get the green light. If the domain hasn't been registered yet, or still needs some setup to be performed, you get the red light and a note of the problem.

Sometimes it can simply be a quick way to spot a typo!

Protocol

We tweaked the popup button slightly so you now get a nice lock icon demonstrating fully secure protocols.

Upcoming Webinar for Teachers

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:02:27 -0700

If you’re an teacher/educator — or you know one — you’ll want to attend our upcoming webinar. If you’ve been curious, or if you’ve heard about our Sandvox app for the Mac from friends and colleagues, here is an opportunity to see Sandvox in action for yourself!

Produced by TeacherCast, this new webinar (web-based seminar) demonstrates how you can create a gorgeous website for your class quickly, easily and with no website expertise using Sandvox, Karelia’s premiere website builder for the Mac.

We start from scratch and build an entire classroom website, demonstrated LIVE, plus interactively answer questions from you, all inside of an hour.

Learn how to build web pages and blogs, build a document repository, issue homework, show videos, create contact forms, and so much more – all from an elegant interface designed for those who want professional results without any hassles. Drag and drop content, integrate with social media, add YouTube videos, and more and see exactly what it looks like right on the screen, as you go, even before you hit the Publish button.

Extracting Your iWeb Site’s Contents to a New Sandvox site, Now that MobileMe is Closed

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:51:06 -0700

MobileMe is no more.

Apple has been warning its MobileMe subscribers for months that the service would be closing its doors. Now that deadline has passed. Hopefully, most people who had websites published there — whether with Apple's iWeb or third-party tools like Sandvox — have had a chance to migrate their website over to a new location. But we know there are many people out there that have procrastinated, and now their website just shows the "MobileMe is Closed" sign.

Fortunately, there's a way out of this.

Many people who had been publishing to MobileMe were using Apple's iWeb. So while Mac users have been "graduating" to Sandvox for several years, we've recently been seeing a huge surge in iWeb/MobileMe users who are looking for a new way to build a website.

We built a new "extraction" tool into Sandvox 2.6 that allows you to grab the essential content of your website from your published iWeb site, and bring that into a new Sandvox document as a starting point. Our previous blog post demonstrates how to do so with a nice screencast.

Sandvox 2.6 Helps iWeb Graduates

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 07:55:29 -0700

Today we are very proud to announce the availability of the new 2.6 version of Sandvox!

With MobileMe shutting down in just two weeks, scores of people are discovering Sandvox and moving over their websites. It has been a pretty manual process up until now, requiring each page's content to be copied and pasted from iWeb to Sandvox.

Today, version 2.6 changes that. While there is no "magic bullet" to make the process completely automated, our new Site Extractor feature will make the process somewhat easier. Sandvox will go through your published iWeb site, and one page at a time, create new Sandvox pages containing the main text and graphics that it finds on the iWeb source page.

And, while it's doing it, you get a spiffy animation to watch!

The resulting Sandvox document won't be a copy of your original website — while that would be nice, there are just too many differences between the architecture of an iWeb site and a Sandvox site to make that feasible. But it will be a good starting point, from which you can start adjusting things, choosing a new built-in (or third-party) design, bringing in any pieces that the extractor may have missed, and adding new Sandvox objects to your pages. Read more about this in our iWeb Transition Guide.

Sandvox 2.5.5/2.5.6

Tue, 08 May 2012 04:16:04 -0700

A couple of days ago, we released Sandvox 2.5.5 (quickly followed by an almost-identical 2.5.6 for direct download only). As usual it's a free update for all Sandvox 2 customers, available from the Mac App Store or directly in-app, depending on where you bought it from originally. There's quite an assortment of bug fixes included; see the release notes for full details.

But that's not all! Because you're awesome, we snuck a few tiny features/improvements in too:

Faster adding of download links

Want to create a link to a file that you haven't yet added to the site? We've added a quick shortcut in the Link Inspector to add a file and link to it in one go.

Smarter Host Setup

We've recently been working with Sam Deane to deliver some rather brilliant improvements to Sandvox's Host Setup Assistant. Most of those are a little way off shipping, but a couple have trickled through for version 2.5.5 and 2.5.6:

When running through the Host Setup Assistant, Sandvox detects if your host requires the use of a particular character encoding and automatically applies it (before, the app would prompt you asking to set the encoding manually). Of course you can still adjust the encoding manually if desired/needed.

Sandvox 2.5

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:17:17 -0800

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Sandvox 2.5 is here today!

Yes, indeed, quite the special occasion. So what's new?

Lion

With the release of Mac OS X Lion, Apple gave us developers an exciting new set of features to adopt:

If it suits you, Sandvox can run as a full-screen app for distraction-free writing; just click the little full-screen button at the top-right of the window.

While working, there's no need for the “Save” command any more; Lion takes care of all that for you. You can quit at any time and the next time you launch, Sandvox will pop back up exactly as you left it. Furthermore it's easy to look over the past revisions of your site from the built-in versions browser.

Note that as part of our move to adopt these new features, Sandvox 2.5 now requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or later. Don't worry if you're still on Leopard (10.5), we'll continue to support you, with Sandvox 2.2.5 out shortly for a variety of bug fixes.

Slide Show

This is a feature we hope you'll find some great uses for! As an alternative to a photo grid, the slide show is a nice easy way to cycle through a collection of photos. We've provided a variety of transition effects, along with control over various other details. I think the demo above rather speaks for itself!

Come visit Karelia at Macworld|iWorld!

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:18:43 -0800

Karelia Software will have a small booth at the upcoming Macworld|iWorld exposition in San Francisco, next week: January 26-28, 2012.

Come visit! We will be at booth 228-027, against the left wall at Moscone West, in the OSX Zone, the hippest part of the expo floor!

Not to pre-announce anything, but we just might have a new version of Sandvox to demonstrate to passers-by….

Sandvox 2.2.1

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 06:51:54 -0800

As promised, Sandvox 2.2.1 restores Delicious List compatibility with Delicious.com. Of course it also contains a variety of bug fixes. On top of that, I thought I'd take the time to note one little security enhancement we've slipped in:

When publishing using SFTP, each server has its own host key. Each time you connect to such a server, your Mac stores a copy of that key. Then, when you reconnect, your copy of the host key can be compared against the server's. If they're different it could be because someone is maliciously trying to get you to connect to a different server! It could also be that your hosting provider has needed to do some maintenance which caused the key to change.

So, as of Sandvox 2.2.1, if this happens you'll be greeted with something like:

Whereupon you should contact your hosting provider to make sure the change was caused by them, before accepting the new host key.

For details on the bug fixes in this update, see the full release notes.

Delicious.com

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:45:19 -0700

Recently, Delicious.com has moved to new ownership, and as a consequence, our Delicious List object has stopped working. We've just figured out how to get it working again, but for the meantime please accept our apologies. The new 2.2.1 update, which we hope to get released as soon as it's approved by the Mac App Store folks, should get things back in shape again.

Sandvox 2.2

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:58:07 -0700

Yesterday we released Sandvox 2.2. It's quite a big update and we're pretty excited about it! So what's new? Let's take a quick tour of the highlights:

Well, first up, we have a great new Map object. Perfect for advertising the location of your business, or where an event is taking place. It's powered by Google Maps, so should be plenty familiar to most visitors. I've popped an example in below:

You know you want some tasty, tasty ice cream…

Our second major feature has been quite some coming, and oft-requested, albeit not terribly glamourous — list editing! Sandvox 2.2 features a brand new Text Inspector giving you full control over list indenting and numbering:

The HTML Editor has gotten some love, gaining indentation controls (use the same menu items as for lists), and a Tidy HTML feature.

We also play a little nicer with Lion now, respecting your setting under: "System Preferences → General → Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps"

That's the major highlights; more can be found in the full release notes!