ALAMEDA, CA, USA, November 19, 2008: Karelia Software has released a Software Developers' Kit (SDK) for creating plugins for Sandvox version 1.5 and up.
The Sandvox SDK allows Cocoa developers to create new custom pages, pagelets, and collection index data types. By creating custom-built plugins, Sandvox can be extended far beyond the core of its own built-in eleven page types and nineteen pagelet types. For example, a developer might create a new pagelet type to display auction listings or local weather reports, or a new page type to display content from a new online video service.
"I am very excited about the public release of the Sandvox SDK as it is sure to make an already great application even better. I found the SDK to be very well documented and within just a few hours I was able to create a new page style," said Gary Byrd of SandvoxWebDesigns.com, who has been beta-testing the SDK.
The Sandvox SDK is a set of documentation, full source code to almost all of the built-in plugins from Sandvox (with a BSD-style license to encourage code re-use), and an Xcode template that makes it easy to get up and running, creating new plugins. Using Cocoa Bindings it is even possible to create many plugins without a single line of source code. Of course, many developers will want to take full advantage of Cocoa to make even richer plugins, including handling drag and drop of files and URLs, custom templates, and new inspector views.
The SDK and documentation are available at <http://docs.karelia.com/z/Sandvox_Developers_Guide.html>.
Karelia has also opened up a web-based forum for developers to discuss Sandvox plugin development at <http://support.karelia.com/?sandvox-dev>.
Sandvox also comes with a Designer's Kit (recently updated), for web designers to create their own custom CSS-based website designs beyond the fifty that ship built-in with the product. The designer's kit is available for downloading at <http://docs.karelia.com/z/Sandvox_Designers_Guide.html>
More information about Sandvox is available at Karelia's website (created with Sandvox, of course): <http://www.karelia.com/sandvox/>.
(Review copies of Sandox for traditional and online media are available. Please direct requests to mediamatters@karelia.com and include your name along with your publication's or podcast's name and/or URL and any information about particular features or needs of special interest to your readership or audience.)
