We released a new version of Sandvox today, which is significantly more than a maintenance release with a three-digit version number. Which of the improvements is your favorite, will be up to you to decide.
Maintenance
Before discussing the most noticeable improvements, it’s worth mentioning the stuff you don't see. Under the hood, we have the regular maintenance fixes you would expect. Also, Sandvox 2.9 preliminarily addresses compatibility issues with Yosemite, which will continue to be addressed as developer seeds are released.
Publishing
Something you'll notice when you publish -- we’ve revamped our publishing engine quite a bit. In day-to-day use, you may notice a few niceties:
During publishing, if a problem is encountered, it will be directly reported to you, rather than you having to keep your eyes peeled for any warning icons in the list of files uploaded. Also in that list of files, we’ve avoided the little annoyance where folders could occasionally appear to progress backwards!
Sandvox has long handled the ability to stop publishing midway through, perhaps because you suddenly spotted a typo that needs correcting, or want to move your laptop to a different wi-fi network. The next time you publish, Sandvox does its best to carry on from the same point. We’ve tweaked the handling of this slightly, so that should you click the Stop button, Sandvox will first finish uploading the current file. This avoids the annoyance of an incomplete version of that file sitting on your server, potentially confusing any visitors who come across it! And of course, if you need to, clicking the Stop button again will make Sandvox stop immediately.
In recent versions of Sandvox, we added support for FTP publishing to use TLS/SSL when available. This is a technology used to secure the connection to an FTP server. In version 2.9 we’ve expanded this support. Host setup now sports extra choices of protocol:
- FTP with TLS/SSL
- FTP with Implicit SSL
- WebDAV with HTTPS
As ever, you should choose the protocol and other settings your hosting provider recommends. The secure connection types are indicated by a little padlock icon; when connecting using them, Sandvox first authenticates the identity of the server, to make sure it’s genuine.
And last but not least, we’re re-using FTP and SFTP connections when possible, which will result in better publishing performance. Yipee!
Vimeo
For video, this release includes a built-in object for embedding Vimeo videos on your site. While YouTube is still immensely popular, Vimeo has proved itself to be a worthy channel for high-end video.
The discussions comparing the competing services are robust and passionate, particularly in creative circles. We must admit there are a number of features, a genuine design focus, and a certain approach to their business, which make Vimeo a very compelling preference.
To provide an example, we will leave you with this beautiful time-lapse video from DakotaLapse.