By: Erik Vlietinck
Wed, December 12, 2007 - 8:52:00

http://www.karelia.com
Score:

Sandvox 1.2.5 has two competitors: iWeb and RapidWeaver. Dreamweaver isn’t really competition, as it’s more aimed at professionals who don’t mind playing with HTML and Javascript code. And Coda is in a league of its own: it’s a coders’ delight, but you won’t find pre-defined design templates in Coda. You will learn how to code properly, though, given that Coda comes with books built-in. However, Coda is for people who like to keep full control over the look-and-feel of their web site and the way their pages will interact with visitors.

Sandvox is for people who like to rapidly move on with design --and who care more about adapting some pre-existing templates than to come up with something totally original. That doesn’t mean Sandvox is not powerful. In fact, after briefly having gone through the program again 3 years after my first review, I can only say the application has become so much better, I would be tempted to recommend it as a quick prototyping application, even to seasoned web designers. Especially the “Pro” version seems to be worth its money. It has the capability to inject code and to add your own HTML snippets.

Sandvox 1.2.5 integrates with a large number of must-haves for today’s web designer, such as a commenting engine, Google AdSense and Google Analytics and much more. The difference with other design-first web creation applications, however, is that it uses third-party services such as HaloScan. This way, Sandvox enables the web technology challenged to build interactive web sites that look good.

Sandvox 1.2.5 is an application that has everything in its package bundle an amateur designer needs to get him started quickly: there are templates from which to shoose, integration with iPhoto and other Mac OS X utilities, and easy to use snippets --called Pagelets-- that you can use to quickly add features to a web page. Contrary to Apple’s iWeb, Sandvox really can help you create a full-scale, full-functioning, Web 2.0 web site fast.

Sandvox versus RapidWeaver

Karelia’s Sandvox isn’t alone in its market niche. Except for iWeb --of which it has nothing to fear-- there is also RapidWeaver by RealMac. Now, the difference between Sandvox and RapidWeaver is not theoretical. RealMac seems more interested in encouraging its user community to help each other than Karelia is. It has a strong forum where RapidWeaver users can find ansers to their questions.

RapidWeaver also is more open than Sandvox in that it has modules that expand the application’s functionality. However, these modules also make the program heavier than Sandvox. With modules, the user must be a little more knowledgeable than with Sandvox all-in approach. That being said, RapidWeaver and Sandvox both have a strong community of users who swear by their preferred program.

Both RapidWeaver and Sandvox come with all the functionality to create interactive sites. However, Sandvox is a tad better for absolute beginners, because you can be creating web sites in minutes without any effort at all --bare web sites, mind you.

As soon as you want more interactivity, Sandvox is on par with RapidWeaver, except perhaps for some of the modules that are included with Sandvox Pro from the start. Both applications let you handle a blog as easily as a static site. Social bookmarking and more complicated things such as typical Web 2.0 gimmicks are possible with Sandvox Pro. AJAX applications are possible too, but will require you to step up the knowledge ladder and hand code this yourself.

The HTML code Sandvox generates is clean. It’s still as clean as 3 years ago. So, with the price Karelia is asking and the feature set you get when buying the Pro version, is it worth your money? Would you make someone else happy when buying this as a present? I do think so. The Pro version enables a beginner to start really simple, and then --as he/she grows in this skill we call web design-- Sandvox Pro allows the user to add features to the design. 

When will you outgrow Sandvox?

That’s difficult to say, really. I would think that you won’t outgrow Sandvox any time soon. You can use this application as a prototyping tool. The benefits are that you don’t have to start a design from scratch, while you can adapt the code itself very easily and very efficiently, as it all validates excellently. So, Sandvox might not appeal to all people because there are those who just love to write code, but to those who only care about setting up a web site as soon as possible, Sandvox might be a good choice --it will certainly be faster than many other methods of prototyping.