Our blog
A Bugfix Release
Thanks to all of those who have downloaded and tried out Sandvox. The response has been overwhelming and for that we are grateful.
Yes, it's true: We've had reports of new bugs. We're working hard on those and we think it's time for an update. Of course, there's no way we could fix them all for this release, but we wanted to tackle the most critical problems and get a new version (1.0.1) out to everyone quickly.
We should also have a more comprehensive bugfix release in a couple of weeks, so rest assured we are working day and night to make your Sandvox experience "smooth sailing."
We have detailed the updates in the release notes. Most of the fixes had to do with the uploading process (we are constantly finding new web hosts that have quirky servers that we have to address) and the French localization (a last-minute goof lost about half of the French strings in the 1.0 release).
We've also updated our website; a del.icio.us pagelet listing some of the sites that our users have created with Sandvox. It's fun to see the variety of sites that people have created!
Download and enjoy…
A Great First Week
It's been less than a week since we officially released Sandvox and the response has been amazing. Sales have been pouring in and feedback has been positive. Thanks to all of the members of the Sandvox community—old and new—for making our launch so successful so far. We're also proud that Apple has made Sandvox its Featured Download this week:
Not surprisingly, we've discovered some bugs along the way, and a few last-minute fixes on our part introduced a few bugs into the French version. In dealing with the multitude of FTP servers we've learned that some hosts need more assistance from Sandvox's publishing feature to successfully upload files. The good news is that we're resolving these issues to make the 1.0.1 release even stronger, and because we're fixing an open-source framework other applications will be able to benefit from the improvements. The 1.0.1 release will be out soon, probably in the next week.
We've set up a Yahoo! discussion group for Sandvox. Sandvox users are welcome to join the discussion, trade hints and tips, and ask questions. Please note that you should continue to contact Karelia directly (via the built-in feedback reporter from the Help menu) for feature requests and bug reports.
Around the corner? We're building a few more new pagelets that many users have been requesting. We're also working on an introductory screencast that will help new users navigate and get the most from using Sandvox.
Sandvox has been released!
We did it! We're now shipping Sandvox.
When we first started showing a prototype of Sandvox at last year's Apple Developer Conference, we thought we were much closer to releasing than we really were. We had a few setbacks along the way, both technical and marketing, but we finally have a product that we are comfortable releasing to the public.
Of course, it's not like we are revealing a big secret program! We've had Sandvox available as a public beta for four months now, and we've gotten some wonderful feedback from the many beta testers who have put the program through its paces.
A side-effect of the public beta program is that people are already building and publishing their websites with Sandvox; we'll link to a few as a showcase in the near future. (Any readers who have a Sandvox website that you would like to show off, drop us a line!)
Thanks to all of you who participated in the referral program that we established to help spread the word about Sandvox. (That program is now officially closed.) For those of you who referred others to Sandvox, you should be getting an email with a special coupon code for you to take advantage of your discount.
We thank all the beta testers who went above and beyond the call of duty to provide feedback, bug reports, and suggestions. We also want to specifically thank Ronald Leroux for helping us with Internationalization; he not only provided a thorough translation of Sandvox in French, but also helped make Sandvox more translatable into other languages, which will get underway soon. We also want to thank Greg Hulands, who not only provided and continues to improve a wonderful open-source media browser and the best Cocoa-based FTP/SFTP/WebDAV file connection framework, but has dug in to help with many other aspects of publishing in Sandvox as well.
Have fun building your website!