Mac OS X

Sandvox: A Fantastic Web Designer for Beginners

Developer: Karelia Software
Version: 1.2.1
Price: $49 Regular, $79 Pro
Operating Systems: Mac OS X
Download Sandvox Here.

But Not for Anybody Else

The first time I ever tried my hand at web design, it was for a college class I was taking. It was a fantastic class - but the quality of education is beside the point. During the semester, I took it upon myself to experiment with a huge variety of different web design programs and I found that each one really is designed to cater to a specific audience. Software like Dreamweaver [review] is designed for intermediate to advanced designers while TextMate and Notepad ++ are only for the experienced. On the other hand, there were also those programs like Sandvox which are perfect for people who could never tell the difference between HTML, CSS, XML, and Java.

Because Sandvox is obviously for the beginner crowd, I’m not going to judge it based on how advanced it is. In other words, don’t expect to write any code here - the base version doesn’t allow for HTML editing. The Pro version does, but only minimally. So don’t go picking up Sandvox if you were hoping for a Dreamweaveresque program for a tenth of the price.

That being said, Sandvox is great at what it does. The program produces high quality web pages that can compete with just about anything an amateur or intermediate web designer could produce on more costly programs in twice the time. However, this ease of use is a double edged sword, as it is very easy to get caught up with the different themes without making any changes at all. If enough people were using Sandvox we could end up with a number of cloned websites with each site’s content the only way to tell them apart.

But, since Sandvox is still such a small time program, the themes can still be used generously without any major tweaking. That’s great, as some of the themes here are really well done. Sometimes when you see these kinds of programs, the themes are absolute garbage - but not here. It really feels like a lot of time was spent crafting the majority of these themes, further adding to the pile of features that makes this program so great for first time web designers.

Although the themes are all well and good, the real heart of your website is what kind of content you add to it, and Sandvox makes it just as easy to add your own stuff as it is to create the site template in the first place. Highlight text and change it how you choose. Click on plus signs to create new areas. Use “pagelets” (like widgets) to add pictures, RSS feeds, and other goodies to the site’s sidebar. There are quite a few options that can be changed with the press of a buttons. Fantastically easy.

Sandvox is not perfect, however. Right off the bat, I noticed a major problem. A lot of the text is difficult to manipulate and cumbersome or impossible to move. This cripples Sandvox and really limits its functionality to crafting only blogs or personal, family visited websites. Also, Sandvox saves in it’s own format, so don’t expect to be able to edit the website without this program at hand.

Like I said earlier, I can’t picture anyone with any web design experience finding anything of use (aside from design inspiration) from this program. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad program. Far from it, in fact. Beginning designers and bloggers should give Sandvox a download. It’s a smaller file and even if you don’t find it useful, you’ll be impressed by the classy animated theme transitions.

Try Sandvox for Yourself.

- Eric Norton

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