Design
The design of a site defines its "theme" or "look." The design affects things like the position of the sidebar, the fonts used, and the color of page elements.
To set the design of a site:
- Show the Design Chooser by clicking the "Designs" item in the toolbar.
- Click a design to select it. Use the arrows at either end of the Design Chooser to scroll to more designs.
Sandvox 1.2 ships with over three dozen pre-installed designs, ranging from simple to complex, serious to fun. Each design is not only a unique look for a page, but a unique way of laying out the elements of pages as well. Such differences include:
- Placement of the sidebar to the left or right.
- Layout and position of the site menu: vertical or horizontal, wrapping to a second line or constrained to just a few items, etc.
- Size of the top area of a page might be large or small.
- Position of the footer might be at the bottom of the page or at the bottom of the sidebar.
- In some designs, the Home Page has a different layout to all other pages of the site.
- Pages with a sidebar might be similar to pages without a sidebar, or quite different.
- Some designs allow you to place a border around a pagelet using the Inspector; some don't.
- Each design has its own set of fonts and colors; some designs even adjust the case of title text.
- Some designs have a fixed page width, others stretch to fit the size of your web browser.
- Callouts are placed to the left of the text on some designs; to the right on others.
A website that was originally built using one design might not work well in another design. For example, a site with a large number of items in the site menu will not work on a design that only fits 6 or 7 items on the menu. If you change the design of a site, you may need to adjust some of the content to make it work.
Additional Designs
Sandvox allows you to install additional designs. For more information, please see "Installing Sandvox Plugins and Designs."
Sources of additional Sandvox designs at present:
- Blueball Design
- Sandvox Web Designs
- Sign up for e-mail alerts when downloading Sandvox, and you will receive an additional five free designs.
As more third party designs are published, we are likely to link to them from the Karelia website.
For those with CSS experience, it is possible to create new designs. This does require quite a high level of skill though, so we do not recommend it for the majority of users. If you do have the required CSS knowledge, you can read the "Sandvox Designers Guide."
Modifying Designs
It is also possible to modify an existing design. Again, this does require a reasonable degree of CSS knowledge, so we do not recommend it for the majority of our users.
CSS Validation
Sandvox makes heavy use of CSS to achieve the designs functionality of the application. Where possible, we adhere strictly to the CSS specifications. However, like many other companies and websites, we do in some cases have to make use of browser-specific CSS extensions to retain compatibility across all major browsers. This is kept to a minimum, but does mean that your Sandvox site's CSS may not technically be entirely valid according to the W3C's specifications.
