Sandvox 2.0

It must be strange being longtime Mac OS X developer Karelia. First they came out with the excellent Watson. Apple added the inferior Sherlock 3 to Mac OS X 10.2, Karelia discontinued Watson in 2004, and then Apple discontinued Sherlock with Mac OS X 10.5—although it sort of lives on in Dashboard.

In 2005, Karelia demoed Sandvox, Apple added iWeb to iLife ’06, and Karelia shipped Sandvox 1.0 later that year. Sandvox has always been more flexible; it wasn’t until ’09 that iWeb supported servers other than MobileMe. I think initially iWeb was a bit simpler to use, though.

Now, iWeb is part of iLife ’11 but seemingly not updated since ’09, and it (like iDVD) is not available from the Mac App Store. Meanwhile, Karelia has released Sandvox 2.0 with an impressive list of changes. It has more features than ever, but to me it feels cleaner and smoother than before.

Personally, I write raw HTML (or write code to generate it), but I’ve enjoyed following Sandvox’s progress over the years. I think it makes a good case study for interface design, particularly the “getting started” experience, complete with videos and periodic e-mails that help you through the steps of creating a Web site.