The Karelia Blog | Karelia Software

Help Wanted - Inquire Within

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:30:39 -0700

Occasionally at Karelia we look for contractors to fill a few needs that go beyond software development. One of the best ways to reach people, we've found, is through blogs. If you think either of the descriptions, below, sound like you, please drop us a line at contractors_summer08@karelia.com — or pass this information on to somebody you know who might fit the bill.

First/Second Level Technical Support

We're looking for a “power user” who can help Sandvox customers with questions about using the application. Somebody who can really dig deeply into reported issues to understand what is happening, reproduce problems, provide solutions for customers and report encapsulated issues to the engineering team. Interaction is done over a web-based email interface. Good “people” skills are a must.

Graphic Artist/Designer

We're always on the lookout to expand our web design offerings for Sandvox; we're looking for one or more designers who can produce world-class web designs for Sandvox. Designs that make the discerning Mac user absolutely drool are what we are looking for! We're also working on another software product, under wraps, that will need some major artistic touches. Send us links to your online portfolio if you are interested!

Karelia iMedia Browser 1.1 is now available

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:25:22 -0700

We're pleased to announce that we have just released a new version of our iMedia Browser. This is a free program.

With this standalone utility, which you can activate from your dock or a small icon in the menu bar, you browse images, sounds, movies, or links from this compact window and drag them into any application.

Version 1.1 provides a number of Leopard-specific fixes, adds support for Adobe Lightroom, brings in Help pages, and incorporates the feedback reporter that we have in Sandvox. You can see the full set of release notes, showing changes since our 1.0 version, here.

Download iMedia Browser 1.1 here.

Karelia on Facebook and Twitter

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:37:48 -0700

Everybody's doing Facebook these days, so we thought we'd create a Sandvox group there. So if you are a Facebook member, come on by and use it chat about Sandvox!

The other big thing is Twitter, so we made a feed where we will keep the world up to date with what we are doing, in more frequent bite-size chunks than we put here. We will be giving you a peek behind the scenes as we put together our updates to Sandvox and other apps. Our latest “tweet” can be found in the sidebar of our Blog page, but come by and visit us on Twitter to see all our updates. If you use Twitter yourself — We recommend using a great desktop application called Twitterrific — please follow us!

The Sandvox Yahoo! Group

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:30:09 -0700

Sandvox users, have you signed up for the Sandvox Yahoo! Group? If not, we wanted to suggest you give it a spin. The group has reached a critical mass in the last couple of months to where just about every question or comment gets a helpful reply from a "guru" user (or from one of the Karelians if somebody doesn't beat us to it).

Even if you don't have a question, it's good to see what others are doing with Sandvox; it might give you some ideas on how to enhance your own website. Feel free to browse the message archives.

So come join the group! If you don't have a Yahoo! account, you can still sign up for the group in mailing-list mode. Just use the form below to sign up. See you there!

Sandvox 1.2.7 is available

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:32:50 -0700

We've been fiercely working on the new 1.5 version of Sandvox (ready for "alpha" stage soon) but meanwhile, we want to give Sandvox users access to a few important fixes. Download the new 1.2.7 version of Sandvox here.

For Sandvoxers running on an Intel machine and using Leopard, this update will be helpful, because we have finally found a way to work around an annoying graphical bug in Leopard that we reported to Apple last October! For those designs that use graphical text, you can go back to those fancy titles once you update to the new version.

We've also updated the embedded media browser to better cache movie thumbnails. (We'll be updating the freeware iMedia Browser application soon to reflect that change, in a few days.)

We're also welcoming A2 Hosting to our list of recommended publishing hosts. One of their benefits is their inexpensive hosting plans. They are offering 10% off all hosting packages with the coupon code tenoffa2. (This offer expires 30 June 2008.)

This update holds a number of other fixes and improvements, so give it a spin!

Sandvoxed!

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:35:27 -0700

Gary at SandvoxWebDesigns has created a nice new online resource: Sandvoxed. It's a showcase of Sandvox-built websites.

The website is just underway, but already it's filling up with a number of user-submitted websites. The thumbnails, which expand to full-size, working websites when you click on them, are organized by design type. It's interesting to see a variety of websites all centered on the same design. Take "Earth & Sky," used also by our own website.

If you've published a website using Sandvox, you can easily submit your site to be included in the list.

There are also some fun badges you can put on your website, like this one:

Easter Eggs!

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:19:37 -0700

Get ready to hunt some eggs! Karelia is participating in a fun program starting this week. It's called the Easter mEgg Hunt ("m" for Mac) and it's a way to expose Mac users to a variety of "indie" software.

Starting on Monday, through the end of the month, you can hunt for "eggs" hidden on participating websites (like ours). Clicking on an egg will enable a group of coupon codes, valid at other participating websites. Collect eggs until you find that app you have been looking for (like Sandvox), or until you have collected them all! In the process, you'll become familiar with a number of indie Mac developers and their software products.

Thanks to Pierre of Houdah for organizing this event.

Happy Hunting!

New Screencast: How the Karelia Website is Built with Sandvox

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:40:48 -0800

A number of people have told us that they didn't realize that our own website is built with Sandvox. Well, it is! The nine-minute screencast linked here shows you how we put it together using Sandvox.

New Third-Party Sandvox Designs Available

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 09:42:26 -0800

Last week, two third-party designers released new Sandvox design packages.

Sandvox Web Designs announced the availability of "Franchise." This is a wide design, available in a blue and dark gray variation. This design includes a package of 100 banner graphics to help customize your website. This design joins the earlier "Suspicion" and "New Day" designs released a while back.

Blueball Design also released a new design pack, "Blueball Cubicle." This design comes in a standard and wide variation, and includes 20 extra banner images. This design joins their existing "Blueball Smooth" and "Blueball Pro Tabs" design packages.

We are more than pleased to see other designers getting on the Sandvox bandwagon and building their own new designs. (CSS designers who want to dig in can check out our detailed documentation page to get started.)

Macworld Expo Wrap-up

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:38:07 -0800

Last week was a whirlwind week for Terrence and Dan. Our first time exhibiting at Macworld, the four days went by in a blur. We spoke to several hundred people, gave out nifty postcard flyers for Sandvox, gave countless demonstrations, and (only occasionally) got a chance to check out the rest of the show floor.

Whenever we met current Sandvox users, we'd ask if we could take their picture—along with their website— for our "rogues gallery." Here are some of our proud Sandvox-using visitors:

John Budacovich, a Mac consultant, posed with his website, Solutions-Mac LLC.

Videographer Charles Dill of Neptune Beach Media.

Mac Developer Scott Gruby with his website for ReceiptWallet. Nice to see other Mac indie companies using Sandvox for their websites!

Fabrice Herrain of BusinesSense, showing his customized variation of our "Rounded Blue" design.

Mike Matthews with his Pac10 Compliance Corner website.

David Morgenstern of "The Apple Core" with one of his several Sandvox-created websites, Congregation Beth Israel-Judea.

Loren Naiman with his website (created using one of the BlueBall Design add-ons), LA-ADDA: Association of Deputy District Attorneys.

Mario Panighetti with his personal site, hosted at mac.com.

Mac Developer Raphael Sebbe of Creaceed shows off his website with a customized design.

Report from Macworld Expo

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 07:43:04 -0800

Macworld Expo is halfway over as of this writing. The halls have been swarming with the Mac elite, and Karelia Software is happy to be a part of it!

Our booth is adjacent to the big Apple pavilion where the curious crowd around floating Macbook Airs and tables with strapped-down iPhones. We’re in a wonderful location—a “village” of indie Mac developers.

Most of the time we spend here is in demonstrating Sandvox to prospective users, but our favorite thing to do is to meet current Sandvox users! So if you are at Macworld this week, be sure to come by and say “hi” at booth S-1338 — we might even take your picture with your website for our “rogue’s gallery” of Sandvox users.

Also, if you see this guy wandering around the halls, be sure to take his picture; maybe he’ll take yours!

Sandvox 1.2.6 is released

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:43:48 -0800

In time for us to show off at Macworld Expo next week, we've just made Sandvox 1.2.6 available for download.

This is primarily a Leopard-compatibility and Google tools update. If you were having problems with the keychain not finding your password during publishing, this should fix it. We've also updated our Google features to track the latest standards. If you use Google Analytics or Google Sitemaps, you'll want to grab 1.2.6 to stay up to date.

One important note about this version is that it now requires Mac OS 10.4.11 or higher. We needed to make some changes to the way Sandvox launches in order to make it compatible with the new Leopard firewall. Fortunately, the updates in 10.4.11 make this possible. As added benefit, 10.4.11 and Leopard share the Safari 3 WebKit which means that Sandvox no longer needs to bundle its own custom WebKit. The Sandvox download is now 15% smaller!

Almost all of our users have upgraded to Leopard or updated to Tiger 10.4.11, so we hope this change comes as a welcome surprise. If you're not running a compatible version of Mac OS X and can't or don't want to update, please continue to use 1.2.5.

See you at Macworld!

Come Visit Karelia at Macworld Expo, Booth S-1338

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:17:33 -0800

We will be at Macworld Expo next week, at booth S-1338, along with other Apple Design Award winners, just behind the big Apple pavilion in South Hall.

We love meeting Sandvox users, so we do hope you'll come by and say hello to Terrence, Dan, and Netan. You can take a sneaky peek at a few features of our upcoming version. And if you want to show off your Sandvox-created website, we'll be ready to take your picture!

(If you haven't gotten a ticket yet, get it here; this link gets you an exhibit hall ticket for $10 or 15% off selected conference programs.)

Lemur Saving Season

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:43:29 -0800

Happy New Year! The end of the year, whether it's because it's a time to reflect on the state of the world, or just tax purposes, is a traditional time for making donations to charitable causes. Here is a story about one that we thought we would pass along.

Mike Lee, progammer at Delicious Monster, recently issued a challenge to the Mac developer community to donate to the Madagascar Fauna Group, an organization working to conserve Madagascar's lemurs and other spectacular wildlife. He started up Club Thievey, an appeal to donate with an interesting twist: Mike will send you a plush lemur just like his if you make a donation of $100 or $10/month. (Naturally, we signed up — when the "world's toughest programmer" issues a challenge, we are quick to respond!)

This challenge may have been targeted to Mac developers, but Mike states that Mac usage and programming experience are not actual requirements. So we thought we mention this to the readers of this weblog. Make your donation by Midnight tonight for a coveted spot in the Founding Troop. We're not sure what that means exactly, but it sounds like a good idea!

Sandvox Featured on MacSanta

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:01:22 -0800

Tomorrow, December 8, Sandvox will be a featured application — with a 20% discount — on MacSanta. If you have been putting off purchasing a license to Sandvox, or you'd like to stuff somebody's stocking, tomorrow is the day!

Since December 8 has already arrived in some parts of the world, we're activating the coupon code early, so starting now, the coupon code MACSANTA07 will give you a 20% discount at our online store.

So far, this "grassroots" promotion by and for independent Mac software vendors has featured deals from the friends of ours at Noodlesoft, Vela Design Group, CocoaTech, Red Sweater Software, Clickable Bliss, Rogue Amoeba, C-Command Software, Potion Factory, and many more. Even if you've missed the featured day with a 20% discount, you can still get a 10% discount by using "MACSANTA07TEN" as your coupon code for any of the companies found on this ever-growing list.

MacSanta is a great way to find out about quality software from independent developers. Help spread the word about MacSanta by digging it!

MacSanta Begins Today; Sandvox Featured Soon

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:47:19 -0800

Happy December! Today marks the beginning of the MacSanta promotion — hosted by the fine folks at Rogue Amoeba — which offers discounts on software created by independent Mac software developers.

Each day, five companies (and their applications) are featured, with discounts of twenty percent off — but only for that day. If you missed that day's deals, you can still get a ten percent discount through the end of the month.

Karelia Software's Sandvox will be featured in about a week; we'll be sure to mention it here just beforehand.

So be sure to visit MacSantaDeals.com every day throughout December — or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed to be automatically notified each day — to be introduced to a variety of software packages created by "indie" vendors. Most of these are demoware ("try before you buy") so you can really take them for a spin and see if they are right for you.

Whether or not you believe in Santa Claus, there is certainly reason to believe in MacSanta.

Even More Leopard Compatibility

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:31:13 -0800

We've decided to put out another version of Sandvox, right on the heels of the recent update, to provide even more Leopard compatibility. This fixes some late-breaking issues that we discovered only recently. Go download version 1.2.5 now, and then for those celebrating Thanksgiving, enjoy your holiday!

New Sandvox is Leopard-Compatible

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:44:29 -0800

Now that Leopard has been out in the wild for a few days, we have had the opportunity to apply our final batch of fixes to Sandvox to make sure that it runs as smoothly as possible under the new version of Mac OS. Most of the fixes to Sandvox were actually workarounds for new behaviors (intended or otherwise) in Leopard.

The caveat that that we mentioned earlier about Graphical Titles still applies. We certainly hope that Apple will address this problem in Mac OS X 10.5.1.

Download Sandvox 1.2.4 now!

Leopard Compatibility Watch: Graphical Titles

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:26:39 -0700

Sandvox users who are wondering if they should upgrade to Leopard just yet may want to hear about Sandvox and graphical text titles — titles that are rendered as a graphical image by Sandvox.

We've found a bug in the initial release of Leopard, on several kinds of Intel-based Macs, that causes these graphical titles to be either colored oddly or nearly invisible. We have reported the bug to Apple — they already know about it, and will be using the testing harness we provided to help isolate and fix the problem. Soon, we hope!

So, until Apple can fix the bug and release an update to Leopard, this feature is just not going to work for many users. If your website uses this feature and you haven't upgraded yet to Leopard, you may want to wait. If you have already installed Leopard and you need to update your site, we recommend that you temporarily turn off the checkbox "Replace titles with graphical text" from the Site → Media inspector. Your title will be visible, but just not look as cool. We'll announce here when Apple has released a version of Leopard that works properly with this feature, so you can turn this feature back on and re-publish your site.

Sandvox's Leopard Roadmap

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:02:47 -0700

Leopard is just around the corner — just under two days at this writing. The current (1.2.3) version of Sandvox works pretty well under Leopard, and we plan to achieve 100% compatibility very soon.

We've found a few minor fixes that we need to apply to make Sandvox be completely Leopard-compatible. We plan on releasing a minor upgrade (1.2.4) some time in the next two weeks, once we have resolved a few issues that we will need to check against the final release version of the operating system — Hopefully Apple has fixed their bugs that affect Sandvox!

For those who are getting Leopard right away, and want to continue using Sandvox, we are making a beta version of 1.2.4 available right away. (Normally we only make these betas available to our Yahoo! group, but we wanted to make it more generally available.)

This beta has a handful of other useful fixes, so Tiger users are of course welcome to try it as well.

Please make a copy of your Sandvox site document(s) before using the beta version, just to be extra-safe. We don't anticipate any problems, but backing up your data is always a good idea in any case!

Download the beta here.

Great Tutorial on Modifying a Sandvox Design

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:48:19 -0700

Sandvox ships with over forty designs, many of them customizable, but there is sometimes a need to adapt one of our designs for a truly unique look for your website. Thomas Green did just that. This morning on our Yahoo! discussion group for Sandvox, he announced that he has posted a wonderful tutorial (PDF) on modifying the "minimalist" design that comes with Sandvox. Thanks, Thomas, for making such a useful resource available!

Stand-alone iMedia Browser Now Available

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:01:47 -0700

Today we are releasing a free utility, the Karelia iMedia Browser: a stand-alone version of the iMedia browser that we originally built for Sandvox.

Members of our email alert list have already had an opportunity to download this utility, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It's now possible to make use of the iMedia browser from just about any application, and drag images, sounds, movies, or links from this compact window into your content.

A Community Effort

We started writing our own media browser, owing to the fact that Apple has not made available a standardized component for application developers to incorporate. Several other companies approached us about incorporating the browser into their applications, so we made it an open-source project with a limited release. We have highlighted some of the contributors (and users) on the sidebar of the Karelia iMedia Browser's home page; please be sure to check out their applications.

Open Source

Now that the project has stabilized, and in order to encourage more developers to incorporate the browser into their own applications, we have opened up the gates, hosting the browser at Google Code so that any developer can download the code and incorporate it into their own application (subject to the terms of the BSD license, of course).

Sandvox 1.2.3 Released

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:32:35 -0700

We have just bumped up Sandvox to a new version, 1.2.3, ready for download.

This release hasn't changed much on the surface from the last version, but we have improved a lot "under the hood." We have made some optimizations that greatly speed up performance when publishing large sites. Many of our beta testers have been pleased with the speedups in opening and navigating sites with hundreds of images. We have also improved the handling of images embedded with text, to speed up processing and fix a few bugs.

Some other updates of interest:

Many of our designs have been refreshed for better compatibility with Internet Explorer version 7. It is probably worth re-publishing your Sandvox site so that visitors using IE 7 will have a better view of your website.
We've added automatic support for PicLens, a Safari plugin that generates full-screen slideshows that we mentioned in our last mailing, in all photo albums and photo weblogs.
We've added some initial support for .Mac "personal domains" (see the Help pages for this).

Karelia's Fall User Group Tour Commences

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:16:26 -0700

Tonight is the kick-off for an informal "tour" of local Mac User Groups (MUGs) to showcase Sandvox.

Dan and Terrence will be appearing at MUGs in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles area over the next few months. This is in conjunction with a special MUG discount on Sandvox, happening for a limited time. (User group members, check your newsletter for information on the discount.)

For user groups not in our area, who want to do their own home-grown presentation of Sandvox, Karelia will provide two licenses to Sandvox Pro that can be given away as a door prize. User Group leaders can contact us for details on this (or to arrange a demo in the LA/SF areas).

The schedule so far - we'll post updates as they become available:

Monday October 1: SMUG, Palo Alto CA

Tuesday, October 16: DVMUG, Walnut Creek CA

Monday, December 17: SVMUG, Cupertino CA

Tuesday, December 18: MacNexus, Sacramento CA

TeleMoose: on Hiatus

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:15:10 -0700

Amazon.com has informed us that they do not want their customers to search or make purchases via TeleMoose. Why? We're not entirely sure, and the few reasons we have been given suggest that Amazon.com doesn't quite understand that TeleMoose is a win-win-win web application—for users, for Karelia Software, and for Amazon.com itself.

Another major online shopping portal—one that recognizes the possibilities of TeleMoose—has already given us the nod, and we'll be ready to unveil a brand new TeleMoose shortly.

Temporary Page Counter Hiccups

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:16:30 -0700

Sandvox users who are using the "Page Counter" pagelet may notice some strange numbers for the next few days. As part of Karelia's transition to a new server for hosting our website and services, we have just moved our database that records page views to its new location. This kind of change takes a few hours or a few days to propagate around the Internet. If you see the number "9999" for number of page views, do not panic — this is just temporary. Your page counts will be restored to their correct version when the server transition is complete.

Bonus Design Pack Now Available

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 10:49:29 -0700

We had some technical glitches in getting the bonus design pack updated. It is now available and ready for download. If you are on our email alert list, use the link we provided in the message we sent out recently, or enter your email address here to get the URL sent to you right away. Check the "READ ME" file; the new version indicates that is is version 1.2.2 of July 2007.

Sandvox 1.2.2 Released

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:01:17 -0700

We've just released an update to Sandvox: Version 1.2.2 addresses issues raised in bug reports and requests that have been submitted by our users. To anticipate viewing of sites on iPhones we also updated every design to minimize the need to zoom in on the iPhone screen.

In addition to the designs that are bundled with Sandvox, we've updated those that are part of the "bonus pack" that you receive as a member of our email alert list. (The bonus designs are Black and White, Cabernet, Dashed, Mezzanote, and Two Lines.) If you are using any of the bonus designs, watch your email for a note containing the URL of the new versions. Or enter your email address here to get a fresh URL for the revised designs sent to you right away.

Be sure to publish your entire site after updating to 1.2.2 (and reinstalling the bonus designs as needed) so all pages of your site pick up the updated designs.

Help Wanted: Tech Support

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:53:54 -0700

Are you a savvy Mac/Sandvox user with a couple of hours of spare time each day to help other Sandvox users? We're looking for a friendly person to work as a contractor to perform front-line technical support for Sandvox.

Prior experience with technical support is not necessary; we have procedures in place that will make it easy to do the job. What is required is a thorough understanding of Sandvox, consistent time availability (about two hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week), problem-solving abilities, excellent English communication, and good skills dealing with other people (over email, using our web-based support system). Communication with the other Karelia folks would be done over email, chat, and voice; the support work can be performed at home or anywhere!

If you are interested in becoming a part of the Karelia team, drop us a line.

CocoaRadio Interview about TeleMoose

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:48:57 -0700

Dan was at iPhoneDevCamp this last weekend, where he got to speak with Blake Burris of CocoaRadio about TeleMoose (recently rated as one of the 8 coolest applications for the iPhone). You can check out the interview with Dan, along with other notable iPhone application builders, here.

iPhone application updates

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:03:59 -0700

We've changed the name of our iPhone project mentioned in our last posting: Its new name is TeleMoose and you can find it at TeleMoose.com. We'll have more news about it shortly, but we wanted to get the correct URL out there sooner rather than later.

Now that we have our iPhones in hand to put TeleMoose through its paces, we've fixed a lot of issues with the beta; we've been continually updating the version on the website. Dan will be attending iPhoneDevCamp this weekend to share and learn more secrets of iPhone development.

We're also adjusting our Sandvox designs slightly to better accommodate the iPhone. We'll have a minor update out soon.

Introducing Amaphone (Beta)

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 03:05:22 -0700

iPhone Fever. We know you've got it — so do we. Today, to coincide with the launch of the iPhone, we are announcing Amaphone™, the easiest way to browse and shop Amazon.com on an iPhone.

This was a natural new project for us. Users of Watson may recall its valuable front-end to Amazon.com, and Sandvox users have by now discovered the ability to build Amazon.com content in your own Website, using a dynamic inspector for loading and displaying items from the Amazon stores. Amaphone uses the same technology that Watson and Sandvox do to retrieve content directly from Amazon and display it without the clutter and long waits for pages to load.

For readers who don't yet have their own iPhone, don't fret — you can still simulate the experience by visiting amaphone.com from your desktop (Safari-only for now) or the cool iPhoney application (Be sure to set 'iPhone User Agent').

As more people get their iPhones, we expect to get some good feedback about Amaphone. The application includes a button for emailing your comments directly from the iphone.

A New Karelia Website

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 22:06:36 -0700

Karelia's website has a new look!

If you get your Karelia news from within Sandvox or your favorite RSS reader and haven't seen it, be sure to head over to the Karelia site to check it out!

Like the previous incarnation, it's built entirely within Sandvox's Pro Edition. Our new site is based on the "Earth & Sky" design and features a custom banner image. Among the new content are sections devoted to Reviews, a Sandvox Site Gallery that shows off some excellent examples of customer-created sites, and Good Karma, where we will share news about Mac developers, products, and events we find innovative or particularly helpful. We've also added new content to the sidebars of several pages, so be sure to visit the new site and see Sandvox in action!

Email Alerts: Are you subscribed to our Email Alert List? If you haven't yet subscribed and want to be among the first to receive information about releases as well as the latest Karelia news, go directly to the signup page and enter your email address. If you're not sure if you're on the list, subscribing again will not result in duplicate mail, so we encourage you to do so. We don't share our email list with anyone and keep our email focused on Sandvox matters. And if you wish to unsubscribe, you can do so whenever you want.

Sandvox gets an Apple Design Award

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:03:31 -0700

We're quite proud to announce that Sandvox 1.2 was awarded runner-up in the 2007 Apple Design Awards for the category of "Best Mac OS X User Experience."

We are at Apple's WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) this week, where each year only a few applications are chosen from a huge pool of entries for several categories, including User Experience, Games, Scientific, Widgets, Developer Tools, and Leopard application.

Each year, Apple packs the house with a glitzy show, not quite as big as the Academy Awards in Hollywood, but certainly a grand event in the Macintosh world. Before the winners were announced this year, they presented an immersive slideshow featuring winners of the awards since 2001; it was great to see Watson (a winner in 2002) there — and to hear the applause when it appeared onscreen! Then the winners and runner-ups in each category were announced. They saved the User Experience category (by far the most competitive) for last, which just added to our tension! When they announced our application as runner-up, the three Karelians (Terrence, Dan, and our newest engineer Mike) ran up on stage to collect and admire our cube-shaped trophy as one of the presenters gave a very nice description of our application and why it was chosen. The winner of this category, incidentally, was Coda from Panic, a beautiful program that is also used for building websites (but geared to a much more technical audience than Sandvox). Congratulations to all the winners; it's certainly worthwhile for all Mac users to look at the full list of awards and try out the applications.

Sandvox Version 1.2.1 is Released

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:02:13 -0700

There's a minor update to Sandvox available now, bringing it up to version 1.2.1. There are a number of bugfixes, plus some really nice performance enhancements we were able to put into place.

As a minor update, it's not about new features, but improvements. One feature we do want to mention is a subtle anti-spam trick that we have put into the Contact form (page or pagelet) that will discourage you from receiving spam from automated contact form "bots." You will probably want to take advantage of this; just open your site document and re-publish it.

This coming week, we will be at WWDC, Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, picking up new development tricks and rubbing elbows with other Mac developers. In between sessions, we'll be putting the finishing touches on our new website (still built with Sandvox, of course) for an imminent launch. For those reading this who are attending the conference, we hope you'll say hi if you run into us! (Dan will be twittering!) Terrence will also be there; as will Mike Abdullah (our newest engineer) who has crossed the Atlantic from the UK to attend his first WWDC.

Karelia is switching web hosts

Fri, 25 May 2007 14:12:22 -0700

This week would have been a great week for Karelia in getting new Mac users aware of Sandvox — an interview with Dan was featured on this week's Macworld Podcast. But Murphy of "Murphy's Law" decided to visit the company that Karelia has been using for web hosting services, and because of that, our website and web-based services were out of commission for three separate occasions this last week.

From time to time, a website is bound to have some "down" time. But the amount of time a website is down should be measured in minutes or at worst hours per year, not *days*. And that's just what happened to us. We had very slow response time from from their technical support in resolving the issues.

Having our own website down is certainly an inconvenience for us; we clearly lost some potential Sandvox users because a cryptic message appeared in place of our site for half of this last week. But what's especially frustrating for us, and for many Sandvox users, is the outage of our "services" domain which handles certain special tasks and provides content for many Sandvox-built websites, including contact-form processing, page view counters, Amazon.com wish lists, and RSS feed relays.

To those Sandvox users and visitors to Sandvox-built websites who noticed problems accessing these components of your website, we apologize humbly and pledge to find a new web host that provides us (and indirectly, these other websites) a higher availability — and a faster response time to dealing with the occasional problems that Mr. Murphy brings from time to time.

Sandvox is One Year Old

Wed, 16 May 2007 11:36:04 -0700

One year ago today, we released the first version of Sandvox. That means that Sandvox is a year old! Just a toddler by human standards, but in internet years, like dog years, Sandvox is an active kid, already at version 1.2 and, in a few weeks, version 1.2.1. My how you've grown!

Back in our secret labs, we're already starting to work on some new features and updates for the next major version. We have learned a lot about what our users want, and so we are re-building a few components of Sandvox "from the ground up."

Thanks very much to our vibrant community of Sandvox users who have made this a happy birthday indeed!

Sandvox 1.2 Released

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:10:39 -0700

Right on the heels of our recent 1.1.2 release, we've just shipped version 1.2 of Sandvox.

We're very excited about this release. We've collected several of the top feature requests from the Sandvox community and incorporated them into version 1.2.

Probably the biggest of these is the ability to customize selected designs by easily substituting your own graphics for the default banner image. We've also added a bunch of new designs to version 1.2, bringing our total count of bundled designs to 43. Eleven of these now have swappable banners.

This release also has four new pagelets that we've been testing, and we think you'll be pleased with the results. For your site visitors who don't use a brower like Safari that informs them that an RSS feed is available for your blog, we have a RSS badge pagelet to do just that job. If you want your friends to know when you are available for iChat or Skype, there's a pagelet for that. Another pagelet puts links to one of our favorite online shopping sites into your sidebar—you have to see this pagelet to believe it. We've also implemented our most-requested feature: a page-view counter. Now you can display (with a number of fun prebuilt styles) how many times a page has been viewed on your website.

We've added some properties to pages in response to user requests. One is a "draft" mode to prevent a page from being uploaded until it is ready. Another is an alternate title for a page, typically shorter, to be used only in site menus.

Our Pro users have submitted a variety of requests, and we've incorporated several in version 1.2. Want to edit HTML in a window larger than that little inspector? Done! HTML editors now have their own separate, resizable window complete with Search & Replace and syntax coloring, allowing you to edit the contents of your Raw HTML pages and pagelets in style and with greater ease. You can also open any chunk of editable text (for example, the body of a Text page or the footer of your website) and directly edit that HTML as well.

Another new Pro feature is an expansion of a capability we introduced in previous versions: Code Injection. We've identified four spots on your website's pages where you might want to insert HTML, JavaScript, or PHP/Scripting code. Previous versions of Sandvox allowed you to inject before the <html> output and within the <head> area; now we also support hooks for the <body> tag and right before the </body> tag.

The final Pro feature that bears mentioning is our integration with Google's Webmaster tools, including Google SiteMaps, and Google Analytics. The codes that Google supplies can now be entered in the new Google inspector, and you can select an option to have a Google sitemap automatically generated and maintained for you.

Many other features (and bugfixes) are listed in the full release notes. We're looking forward to seeing some of the amazing new sites our users create, and hope you'll let us know when you have your Sandvox site published. (You can send us a note with our built-in feedback reporter, or tag your site with 'svxsite' if you are a del.icio.us user.)

Enjoy!

Sandvox 1.1.2 Released

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:42:37 -0700

Today we are releasing Sandvox 1.1.2, a bug-fix and optimization update to Sandvox. The release notes provide the details, but in short: we've fixed a lot of issues. The feedback from our beta testers over the last several weeks has been very positive, and we believe the Sandvox community at large will be happy with this update.

And now, onto the next update!

Blueball releases new Sandvox design

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:45:08 -0700

Third-party companies have been working on new Sandvox designs, and we're pleased to share the news that Blueball Design recently announced the availability of their first Sandvox design, "Blueball Pro Tabs." We've had a number of users create designs for their own sites, but Blueball is the first with a full commercial release of a new design.

Unlike our built-in Sandvox designs, which assume that the main content area is 800 pixels wide, the Blueball design comes with a 1000-pixel-wide variation. We're looking forward to more designs from Blueball and other companies, and yes, we'll continue to add new built-in designs to Sandvox, too!

SVDesignMiner Released

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 20:07:19 -0800

We love it when new utility applications are created to work with existing applications. An example of this is newly-released SVDesignMiner from To•The•Point Software. It browses the Sandvox designs on your system and makes it easy to duplicate an existing design and start modifying it to your tastes.

It doesn't hide the CSS files from you to make minor adjustments; that is an entirely different ballgame. But if what you want to do is tweak a design, especially the graphic elements that make up an existing design, this could be a useful tool!

By the way, a couple of other companies will be releasing their own custom Sandvox designs. If you are looking for some designs that go beyond the forty or so available from Karelia, you may want to give those a try. We'll mention them here when they go online.

Now Available: Version 1.1.

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:10:10 -0800

Just a few hours ago, we updated Sandvox to 1.1 and made it live on our website! For all existing users of Sandvox, we recommend that you update to this version.

We've listened to the avalanche of feedback and requests from the community of Sandvox users and think that you will find the updates since the 1.0 release compelling!

We've mentioned in previous weblog entries what this new release is about. Our focus has been stability; we have rewritten some of Sandvox's internals from the ground up in order to make the program solid and reliable. We've made a huge number of bugfixes to which even the release notes cannot do justice. And there are some nice new features as well, including:

• Eight gorgeous new site designs

• A comprehensive and completely integrated Help, including step-by-step "How do I...?" pages that explore the many features of Sandvox

• Localization to Italian and Simplified Chinese languages

• A snapshot feature to cleanly save your work in progress

• Greatly improved Flash file support

For anybody who signed up for our email alert list, you will be receiving a message soon (if not already) mentioning that we have also updated our 5-pack of bonus designs, along with a download URL. Just in case anybody has these designs and is no longer on our email alert list, it's probably a good idea to sign up on our website so you can get the new 1.1 version of these bonus designs. (There are many compatibility fixes, including for IE7).

Sandvox 1.1 is coming soon, really!

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 09:09:47 -0800

We had no idea it would take so long to get version 1.1 out the door. We are just now releasing our eighth official beta version of 1.1, and we feel like we are getting closer to having it good enough for a general audience. There is such a difference between the current 1.1 version and the released 1.0.4 in terms of stability; we think Sandvox users will be pleased.

Once we get 1.1 out the door, we are anxious to begin work on version 1.5, for which we have plans for some new pagelets and page types, rich text options, new HTML hooks for Pro users, and so forth. We have received your many suggestions; now we just need to actually build them.

What are we up to?

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:02:05 -0700

We're still here! Our collective noses have been "to the grindstone" for much longer than we would have preferred. At WWDC, we got hold of a number of techniques for solving some bugs and crashes that have been dogging a small number of Sandvox users, but it has taken a while to actually fix everything!

So we are getting pretty close to having a new release for you all. Some of the crashes and bugs we have been able to fix:

Database access crashes

iMedia crashes from accessing certain images and movies

Slowness in loading images

Problems with editing text, especially in Japanese

The bonus of waiting so long is that we have been able to get a few more goodies bundled into the application, such as several new designs, integrated Help, and two new languages.

We hope to get the new version out in a couple of weeks. We really want this to be the most stable release ever. Your patience is appreciated!

WWDC Wrap-Up

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:31:50 -0700

Last week, the entire Karelia development team took a break from our normal routine to attend Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). This is Apple's annual big event for its developers, where we get a peek at Apple's plans for their operating system, learn new technologies, and schmooze with other developers and Apple engineers. It was great to get some one-on-one time with members of the Core Data, QuickTime, and WebKit teams to solve some particularly tricky issues. Without (hopefully) violating our NDA, there are some major improvements in Leopard and Xcode 3 that we can take advantage of today to debug Sandvox while still deploying the application for Tiger. We are excited! It was also a great time to step back and be inspired by Apple's forthcoming "Leopard" technlogies and then brainstorm new ideas for Sandvox and even future products (working hard to stay out of Apple's way of course).

The conference was a first for us: the first time that the three engineers working on Sandvox were actually in the same place at the same time. We commemorated that with a photo next to a gigantic new MacPro.

Of course, now we're all back in our distributed offices again, hard at work on version 1.0.5 of Sandvox and beyond….

Has it really been a month?

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:15:12 -0700

It's hard to believe a month has gone by since our last posting here and our last release. Tonight we are releasing version 1.0.3 of Sandvox, so it's probably a good idea to put a little note about what we are up to.

This last month has been focused mostly on bugfixes. We keep squishing them, but we find new ones in other places! We did finally manage to add a few more localizations of Sandvox to the mix, so now along with English and the French that Ronald Leroux provided, we have Traditional Chinese (thanks to Jack M. H. Lin), Danish (thanks to Mogens Thyregod), and Japanese (thanks to Daisuke Okada and Hiroto Sawane). It's extremely gratifying to see Sandvox running in other languages, especially the non-European ones that none of us here can make out at all!

Going forward, we are preparing for Apple's WWDC — their annual developer conference, where we get to hobnob with fellow developers and helpful Apple engineers. There will be three of us Karelians attending (Dan, Terrence, and Greg). While it unfortunately it brings development to a halt for the week, we have the opportunity to learn so much about current and forthcoming Apple technologies, it's all worth it.

In the mean time, as we continue to fix bugs and deal with problems that arise for current users (for another ".01" release in a short while), we are also mapping out what features to put into a version 1.1 update. We have collected hundreds of great suggestions from our users, and we have a few surprise ideas up our sleeves, so we expect the 1.1 release later this year to be well-received.

Sandvox 1.0.2, Screencast, Discount Deadline

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:24:39 -0700

"If you like the idea of iWeb but find it lacking, you owe it to yourself to check out Sandvox." — Review of Sandvox 1.0.2, MDJ, 15 June 2006

Wow, what can we say? Another two weeks and another release! In case you haven't heard, we released Sandvox 1.0.2 yesterday. More bugs squashed. A few new things thrown in.

By popular demand, Sandvox now includes a more full-featured Format menu. Change the fonts! Change the justification! Go nuts! We don't mind. Just keep in mind that the person viewing your site might not have "Holstein" or "Papyrus" installed on their system, so your font choices might not be visible to others. See the list of fonts that are installed on Mac and Windows machines.

We've also made available, through the Help menu or right here, a new in-depth screencast that walks you through building and publishing a new website that includes a weblog, a photo album, movies, and more. Check it out!

And, also by popular demand, we're working on expanded documentation, including a new "How do I...?" section. that should help answer those burning questions.

For those readers that have been wavering about whether or not to buy a license, here's a little green incentive: get it by Friday before the introductory price period is over.

Once again huge thanks to everyone who has downloaded and tried out Sandvox. The response continues to amaze us!

Keep sending us your thoughts. We're already working hard on the next update….

A Bugfix Release

Tue, 30 May 2006 15:04:00 -0700

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

Tue, 23 May 2006 12:36:42 -0700

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!

Tue, 16 May 2006 23:59:13 -0700

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!

Terrence and Dan on the "Pomcast"

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 10:35:03 -0800

We wanted to point out that we were interviewed last week on the English-language version of "Pom Pom Pom Pom."

We used Skype to conduct the interview, spread over four locations in three countries, two continents and (fortunately) one language. We talked about the history of Karelia and how we teamed up, Sandvox and how it compares with other website creation tools, and so on.

(This is the first podcast interview that has gone "on the air," though we did talk technical with Blake at CocoaRadio back in January; that interview should go live later on.)

(iTunes Link)

(direct link to pomcast website)

Evolving User, Developer, Designer Documentation

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:42:21 -0800

Sandvox users, potential plug-in developers, and potential creators of Sandvox designs should check out our new "wiki" site, http://wiki.karelia.com/. We've made available the beginnings of some user documentation, a kit for CSS-savvy folks to build new designs, and information for Cocoa developers to build their own custom plugins, to create new page types, pagelet types, drag-and-drop data sources, and more.

This documentation is built as a "wiki" (using the same software that runs Wikipedia), meaning that anybody can contribute. For those of you who by now are comfortable using Sandvox, and you'd like to contribute your expertise to help others, this is your chance! The rest of the Sandvox community will appreciate any input you provide. Or, you can use the "discussion" tab on any topic for which you'd like to comment upon.

Triskaidekaphilia

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:47:58 -0800

It's been a few weeks since our last beta release, and we've been able to make good progress. Today's release is 1.0 beta 13 (hence the obscure title of this posting).

Of course we've fixed a lot of bugs, and finished a lot of incomplete features. And of course there are more of those to come.

In preparation for a Software Developers' Kit (SDK) so that other developers can build plug-ins to Sandvox, we've built a few new page and pagelet types (which we will make open-source soon) that we thought we should highlight here:

Contact Form: Visitors to your site can fill out a form to send you a message. This is handy so you can be contacted, but your email address is not exposed for spam harvesters. When somebody fills out the form, the message is posted to Karelia's servers, where we decrypt your email address and send the message on its way. You can set up your form to allow for a subject as well as a message; that message subject can be fixed, free-form, or a choice from a popup list. We're doing this as both a page and a pagelet so this can be compact or expansive depending on your tastes.

Site Map Page: For more complicated sites, this page shows an outline of your site's structure.

Digg List Pagelet: Keep your site fresh with stories you or others have dugg.

Flickr Badge Pagelet: If you keep your photos on Flickr, this will put a sampling of your photos in the sidebar.

Stickam Tool Pagelet: Just launched, Stickam puts a flash-based multimedia "stick" on your sidebar that plays music, shows photos, movies, etc.

del.icio.us Links Pagelet: Share the sites you've bookmarked with viewers of your website.

The amazing thing is that these kinds of pagelets can be built in a matter of hours. We are hoping that once we get this documented, we'll start seeing some new page and pagelet types that we haven't even considered.

So back to this Number 13 concept: did you realize there are thirteen pagelet types in Sandvox now? Could it be a coincidence? And we almost released on the thirteenth of the month...

Between the Betas

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:27:43 -0800

We've purposely avoided putting out a new beta for a few weeks so we can concentrate on bugfixes and improvements. There is still a lot to accomplish, but we have managed to conquer some important tasks, thanks to feedback of users like ... well, maybe you!

For instance, we have optimized the memory management of media (images and sound) to make Sandvox more responsive when dragging photos in. We've continued to improve the "iMedia" browser for better integration with iPhoto and the other iApps. We now will ask whether a user wants to install (or remove) our crash reporter (though it's highly recommended that people install it, at least during our beta-testing cycle). The HTML we generate now uses relative links, not absolute links, which will make a website easier to preview after exporting. We've improved the text encoding that is generated for non-English sites. And, of course, we've fixed lots of other big and little bugs along the way.

We should have our next beta out in a couple of weeks; certainly before the current beta expires. And we're planning on getting a new Internet Service Provider to handle the large load that we get when everybody tries to download 15-megabyte files at the same time!

A Busy Macworld Week

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:31:18 -0800

Has it really been an entire week since Macworld Expo started, with a flurry of activity to release Sandvox to the public? It seems like a lifetime ago.

Macworld week was so busy, we hardly had any time to work on the application. At least Greg was back in Australia working on improving our file upload capability, and he was able to sneak in a few nice features in time for our big demo at the San Francisco Apple Store (for a CocoaHeads meeting) on Thursday night.

We got some great press and blog coverage about Sandvox last week; I wanted to single out one in particular from Mac 360: Point, Click, Drag, Drop. Sandvox Web Sites. So Cool.

We have just released a new beta version (b12) that won't expire for another month. We should have some more releases before then, but this way we can (hopefully) hunker down and work on the many bug reports that have been coming in.

There's More to Life than iLife

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:34:56 -0800

Along with the rest of the Mac world, we saw the Macworld keynote, and naturally we were not too pleased to see how similar Apple's iWeb and its intended audience turns out to be to our vision of Sandvox. Lightning has indeed struck twice.

Clearly, Mac users who just want to get their family photos and simple blog published on their .mac account are going to be using iWeb. There is no way that we can compete with what is essentially bundled software.

What Sandvox can offer is a compelling alternative to iWeb, just as Watson turned into an alternative to Sherlock 3; Path Finder is an alternative to Finder; NetNewsWire and a host of others are alternatives to Safari's RSS reader; and Adium can replace iChat. As each of these offer solutions to the limitations provided by Apple's software, so too will Sandvox.

Of course, with only a few hours having elapsed since the announcement, we are still honing these differences, but out of the gate, some of the biggest limitations of iWeb (.mac only, not pluggable, no ability for HTML content) can become strengths for Sandvox.

As we move forward past version 1.0, we will be able to further distinguish Sandvox from iWeb by focusing on features that our users demand that will never be a part of the iLife suite.

Sandvox Public Beta is Released!

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 00:01:22 -0800

We've just made the first public beta version of Sandvox available for download. If you are on our email list, you should be receiving the download URL shortly. If you are not on our list, sign up on our website to get the download information emailed to you.

Thanks for all the encouraging comments we've gotten over the weekend from everybody since the whole "iWeb" rumor broke. We'll see on Tuesday what all the fuss is about. In the meantime, please check out Sandvox.

We had an "early adopter" discount for everyone who had signed up for email alerts before this beta release, but since it's Macworld Expo week, we can't neglect to have a discount for new signups to our list! Either sign up on our website at Karelia.com and enter "Macworld" where asked "How did you hear about us?", or sign up using this URL: http://www.karelia.com/?refid=270886 For this discount, you must sign up before Friday night (Jan 13, 2006) at midnight (Pacific Time).

Since we will (probably) be competing with Apple — a challenging task— we want to make sure that Sandvox is seen by as many Mac users as possible. With that goal we've put together a referral discount program as an incentive for readers to tell their friends about Sandvox. Thanks for helping us out!

Macworld Expo Attendees:

Look for people wearing Karelia/Sandvox T-shirts. It might be us. Or somebody we know. Don't be shy, say Hi!

The Long Story Behind Karelia's New Logo

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 09:27:28 -0800

by Dan Wood

Astute Karelia observers and subscribers to our email list may have noticed the new logo we quietly unveiled at the beginning of the year. I had intended to write up the story behind the logo some time after Sandvox's release, but the rumors that started circulating on "the internets" yesterday prompted me to write it now. At the end, I have an announcement that will demonstrate how this logo applies to Karelia software today.

Ancient History

In early 2001, when the dot-com crash was just getting underway, I was laid off from my job, programming Java and Mac (OS 9) code at a Bear River Associates, a small company that, at the time, did Macintosh consulting and built websites for dot-com companies. Unemployed, I spent my spare time working on Cocoa programming for the fledgling Mac OS X, since that's what I really wanted to to do for a living. I wrote a small application, showed it off at Apple's WWDC that year, and licensed it to another company. (It was never published, unfortunately!) Mid-year, looking for a new project to start in between those rare job interviews, I got inspired by Apple's Sherlock 2, a desktop program wrapping web search functionality. I came up with the idea of a toolkit of of interfaces to web services (as they came to be called): phone book lookup, auction tracking, weather, movies, TV schedules, and so forth. I named the program Watson, inspired by Sherlock, meant to be its "companion." Toward the end of the year, I hadn't found a job yet — I had even interviewed at Apple, a horribly long commute for me, but they weren't interested. So I decided to finish up Watson, throw together a website (archived) and release it as Demo-ware to see if I could make some income to make ends meet. But by the end of 2001, I realized I was making enough money that I didn't need to look for a job anymore — I had made my own job.

I quickly formed a real company (I had chosen the name Karelia because I had the domain already, for my personal website), got some help in polishing up the User Interface and Website from Robb Beal (who later moved on to create the innovative Spring), and watched Watson take off. It seemed that the sky was the limit, until I was called in for a meeting with Apple's Phil Schiller. I listened to him tell me that Apple was going to announce Sherlock 3, and it was very similar to Watson. I watched a demo of their program: all but one of their modules connected to the same service that Watson did and looked almost the same. I was too stunned to be upset.

The Phone Call

I drove home, gradually realizing what I had just witnessed, and sent off an email to my contact at Apple Developer Relations expressing my unhappy sentiments. An hour later, Steve Jobs called me.

"Here's how I see it," Jobs said — I'm loosely paraphrasing. "You know those handcars, the little machines that people stand on and pump to move along on the train tracks? That's Karelia. Apple is the steam train that owns the tracks." So basically the message was: get out of the way, kid; this is our market. The conversation actually felt fairly productive, and I hung up with the impression that Apple would at least acknowledge their inspiration by Watson, and that they would "throw me a bone" — a little more compensation than offering me a job. (Although some people see an Apple job offer as the Holy Grail, I had no interest in working for the Sherlock team after what had happened; it didn't feel like any kind of compensation for the ideas they had borrowed.)

I figured this was the end for Watson, except that emails kept coming in from people who were beta-testing the new "Jaguar" version of Mac OS X that included Sherlock 3, encouraging me not to give up on Watson. It turns out that Sherlock 3 was slow and not much fun to use. Plus, I could keep adding new modules; Sherlock seemed stuck with its initial set.

I thought I had been swept off the tracks, but no! So I kept on with Watson. Toward the end of 2002, I got a few offers from several large companies that were interested in getting into the desktop Web Services game. Negotiations took almost a whole year, but I wound up selling the technology of Watson to Sun Microsystems, and quietly joined their team in late 2003 to create a sequel to Watson, in Java. I was excited to be working on a cross-platform application whose audience would dwarf Watson's. And it was still going to look and work great on the Mac, my platform of choice.

Beginnings of Sandvox

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Way back when I had thought Watson was on its last legs, long before I started with Sun, I had come up with some ideas for a really easy-to-use website builder. I had envisioned an application that would allow me to make simple websites, weblogs, and photo albums. The tools that were available at the time — and this still holds true — were just not easy or versatile enough. I was inspired by The CSS Zen Garden to build modern, beautiful, standards-compliant websites. I pitched the idea to Terrence Talbot, who had contributed several tools to Watson, first as a third-party developer and then as a contractor; he expressed interest in working with me on the project. So we got started on the program in mid 2003; I spent some time building a rich-text-to-HTML converter (which we've abandoned now that Safari's WebKit allows you to edit rich text) and Terrence started on the application infrastructure. He continued to work on the program while I was working at Sun.

Well, the whole Watson port project eventually imploded at Sun; management had become interested in other shareholder-appealing opportunities. (Lesson learned: Do not sell a your Cocoa (née NeXTStep) application to Sun unless you are Jonathan Schwartz.) I was devastated to see Watson hung up to dry (though surprisingly, it is still quite functional; about half the tools still work fine), but relieved in a way — I did not enjoy writing Java "Swing" (user-interface) code, nor working for a big company. So in August 2004, I went back to work with Terrence on our web-building application. Yes, I still would rather create programs in Cocoa for the Mac than any other platform.

So, for over a year since I left Sun, Terrence and I have been hard at work on Sandvox. We showed some previews of it back in July 2005 at Apple's WWDC; we wanted to be able to talk about it so that we could get better help and feedback with what we were doing with Apple technologies such as WebKit and Core Data. (Plus, we thought we were a lot closer to release back then than we really were.) We went into beta testing in Fall 2005 and have been moving closer to release of the program.

Of course, since we started the project, I've always been looking over my shoulder at Apple. To switch metaphors for a moment, I've been worried about lightning striking twice in the same place. We even made fun of the idea, and commissioned a company logo paying tribute to the metaphor of two guys on a handcar. (It took 3 artists to finally get what we wanted!) But every recent Steve Jobs Keynote that Terrence and I have watched has been filled with apprehension: is Apple going to release a program that steals our thunder? So far the answer has been no … until now.

Enter: iWeb

Yesterday, an Apple page describing their upcoming iLife '06 slipped out listing a single new application: iWeb. Here we have been moving closer to release (ironically, not feeling like there would be any competition from Apple because I have been finding bugs in Apple's WebKit that implied that Apple couldn't possibly be doing any kind of Webkit-based website-editing application).

Since the "iWeb" page is still (as of this writing) in Google's cache of Apple's site, I know it's not a hoax. I wasn't able to get much information out of anybody I know at Apple (tight-lipped as they are!) but it's pretty clear that there is something brewing for next Tuesday's keynote.

At least this time, I'm not expecting that Apple's offering will be a clone of our application, but the timing is certainly unfortunate. Although at times I feel like we are Apple's unpaid "Research and Development" department, the truth is that Karelia's product ideas just happen to be mainstream, like Apple's. I won't be surprised if iWeb turns out to be as lame as Sherlock was, so we can get off the tracks, let Apple pass by, then get back on the tracks and back to work.

Being Nimble, Being Quick

With that single word, on that one leaked page, our plan changed yesterday. And this is where we come back to the meaning of our logo. Because we are a small company, we are nimble — much more so than a Fortune 500 company or a bowl of petunias. We were going to keep Sandvox under wraps (save for a few hundred beta testers) for a few more weeks, but now we've decided that it's going to be important for people to get a chance to see Sandvox this week, and compare it to Apple's iWeb — whatever it turns out to be. Thus, we will be releasing Sandvox as a Public Beta on Monday, the day before Apple announces iWeb. So sign up on our email list so you will be notified of its release, and give it a spin. We'll keep chugging along....

Happy New Year

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 14:23:01 -0800

It's difficult to balance how much time to spend updating the Sandvox weblog in these weeks before release. We want to keep all of you readers in the loop as we enter the new year, but also keep things under wraps for just a little bit longer.

In any case, the beta-testing program is going well. (Apologies if you signed up to beta-test but haven't gotten on the list yet. We have been overwhelmed by the number of beta sign-ups!) Some beta testers found an interesting incompatibility with some third-party software, which we have been able to work around. We have made great improvements to our FTP uploading system, and have even managed to bring in SFTP support as well. We've had to re-vamp (again) the data model used to store Sandvox documents, which should result in much greater stability.

An update on the WebKit proposal we blogged about last month: It's been quite a success. Of the six on our list, five have been fixed (either by Apple engineers, or outside developers who took us up on our offer), and one we were able to work around. We're happy that we made this investment!

We were really hoping to get Sandvox released before the end of the year, but the problems we've uncovered during beta-testing have taken longer than anticipated. Yes, just like every other software product! In any case, we are getting close. We expect to offer a sneak peek of Sandvox to members of our mailing list next week, and then actually release a few weeks after that.

A note to press: We will be at Macworld expo, though no booth (since we're not ready to show or sell). We'll be happy to meet up with members of the press and give them a preview of the application. Use the Email Us link, at the top of our website, to set something up.

A Proposal for Webkit Programmers

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:00:55 -0800

Sandvox is built using some cool technologies from Apple, the most obvious one being WebKit. It not only renders Web content but provides the basic framework that allows a user to edit text directly on the page. We think WebKit is great, but we've also been finding some bugs in Apple's code that we have to work around.

Unlike most other toolkits from Apple, WebKit is open-source, which means that any engineer can fix the bugs, not just folks at Apple. And, in an ideal world, we would have a staff of dedicated programmers assigned to fixing the WebKit bugs that we need fixed to make Sandvox work as smoothly as possible.

But we are a small company, and programming the depths of WebKit is not our forte. So we came up with an idea: offer a tangible "thank you" to whomever can fix the bugs we need fixed. A win-win situation: not only will Sandvox benefit, but so will any app that uses WebKit.

So here is our offer: for each bug from our list (below) that is fixed (via a patch attached to the report in the WebKit Bugzilla), to our satisfaction, we will pay a "fix thank you" of US$100. If and when a submitted patch is committed to the official WebKit repository, we will pay that person a "committed patch thank you" of US$150.

These are the bugs that we need fixed, and that are eligible for the "thank you":

3579 In-place style-switching is leaving junk behind, messing up styles

3983 outline:auto improperly puts outline around contained elements, not the actual div

4003 contentEditable div cannot be edited if it starts out with empty or <p/>

4726 Drop of multiple non-image file URLs only yields one item

4879 Included Javascript included in a page loaded with [WebFrame loadHTMLString:] is ignored

5354 Corner case where you can select outside the bounds of an editable block.

For developers interested in taking any of these on, these are some useful resources: theWebKit Home Page, OpenDarwin Bugzilla, the Surfin' Safari Blog, and the public IRC channel #webkit on irc.freenode.net.

Now the fine print: Apple employees and contractors are not eligible for the monetary "thank you." (We don't want to have a conflict of interest with Apple's scheduling.) Work performed is licensed under the same license as the rest of WebKit. In the event multiple fixes are submitted, we will pay a "fix thank you" to the creator of the first submission that meets our criteria. We will pay a "committed patch thank you" to the creator of whichever patch is committed to the repository; this may not necessarily be the same person who submitted the first patch that met our criteria. After the programmer submits a patch to Bugzilla and/or a patch has been committed to the repository, and it meets our criteria, he/she mustsubmit an invoice for their work to Karelia Software. (We prefer Paypal for non-US payments.) Karelia reserves the right to withdraw or modify this offer, with respect to any or all bugs noted above, at any time prior to submission of a patch that meets our criteria.

Update: I've pulled 3985 from the original list because it's just an assertion failure, not really a bug that affected Sandvox.

Update 2: So far so good, there has been some progress on a good number of the bugs listed. A couple are close to being resolved, and one is off the table because it turns out that it's a Apple documentation issue, not a code bug that needs fixing. [Also, Merci to the prolific comments, I have fixed the atroseous speling eror in this entry.]

Update 3: Operation successful! It took a while, but they are pretty much all solved.