March 22, 2011 at 8:45 am Hey all I am looking to buy myself one of those oh-so delicious mac computers but my only issue is that they are so ridiculously expensive! I have been looking at just getting a regular MacBook, but is it really up to standards for producing good web design?
Obviously more expensive ones will be better but I just want something that I can work on without being annoyed by flaws that I didn’t know about before I spent my precious £860. Does it live up to your expectations? Which one would you say is the best suitable? March 22, 2011 at 9:12 am If you are just coding, any mac should work.
It really depends on how much graphic editing you are doing. The more intensive the graphics editing is the more power and ram you will need of course. To give you a benchmark, I have a MacBook Pro 2.3GHz Core Duo, with 4GB’s of ram, and I do pretty heavy graphics editing.
At certain points, I have Photoshop, Illustrator, and Firefox, and Google Sketch-up all open at once. At that point some of the filter effects in Photoshop and Illustrator produce a pin wheel of death, but it does pretty well. So other money saving tips: 1. A CinemaView CV24A 24″ LCD display, is as great of a secondary mini display port monitor as Apples are. But they 80% there for 50% of the price. Also if you drop in an SSD, it does more to speed things up than most CPU and RAM upgrades! I did it with a OWC conversion kit.
Which turns the CD drive bay into a second hard drive bay. March 23, 2011 at 9:14 am I don’t understand the new age window haters. I agree that prior to W7 windows had some issues which is why a lot of people stayed with XP or made the jump over to Apple. However, W7 has changed the playing field for Microsoft and that is a point no one can argue and those people that do argue that point are arguing for the sake of arguing. Apple is a great productoverpriced?
Yes but still just the same a great product. I was on the brink of jumping to Apple before W7 came along and once I started using W7 I realized Microsoft finally had a reliable user friendly product on there hand. W8 is around the corner and it will only get better from the reports that I am hearing. Like I said.I am not putting down Apple for the productI am simply saying W7 is a great product and has changed windows for the years to come.
At least Microsoft and W7 they were able to kill those “HiI’m a mac” “HiI’m a PC” commercials. Apple finally put down the gloves and Microsoft is healing rather well these days. March 23, 2011 at 9:31 am Windows 7 isn’t bad, it’s startup time on my work PC is much faster than my MacBook (although my MacBook isn’t old), however it takes forever to shut-down and that ‘Force Shut-Down’ thing that comes up telling you there are programs still open but not showing you any actually open just annoys the hell out of me. I also hate the way they’ve basically stolen the dock and made it worse and the stupid compatibility mode when you run older programs where the screen has to flash and the taskbar goes to a solid colour.why is this necessary?!?! In any case, I much prefer my Mac, however need a new one! March 23, 2011 at 9:37 am I am a traditional Windows guy.
In fact this is the first Mac I have ever owned. I do agree that Windows 7 is a fantastic operating system, and you can get a lot more for your money going that route (I have two desktops running it). With all that said, I just enjoy using the Mac so much more. While OSX isn’t perfect I just find that the overall experience of designing on a Mac much better.
The other big this is that, programs made for mac for some reason have a little extra polish to them. This goes double or triple for mac exclusive programs like Flux. They seemed to be approached from a usability stand point instead of an engineering stand point. But you pay for the experience!
If you are a budget conscience buyer, a good Win7 machine is 80 / 90% of the experience at a much lower price. March 23, 2011 at 12:09 pm Thank you all for your input, I really appreciate it. The apple refurb store is definitely my next stop!
I have never even seen it before but sounds like it is quite a safe gamble for saving some pennies. I have a PC at work and it is indeed fine to work with but I had a mac before and plus no pc software I have used can compare to coda, 1Password etc. Like Andrew says, it’s just so enjoyable to use.
Best Web Design For Mac
I would love to get an iMac but I don’t have space in my shoebox flat for a table or desk. Damn you overpriced London.
If you thought building websites wasn’t for you, think again. Sparkle is the intuitive site builder for your online portfolio, team or band pages, or business and client sites. Skip the tedium and design a gorgeous site that works right out of the box. WITH SPARKLE YOU. Create landing pages in a matter of minutes. Test your ideas quickly.
Focus your attention on content and layout. Quickly iterate on fully functional site designs.
Sparkle turns your design into a live site on the fly, no coding and no jargon. You don’t need to know about code or other web programming concepts: Sparkle makes sites happen. CREATE MEDIA RICH SITES. Quickly add galleries, video, audio, maps, social buttons, and downloadable files. Web fonts, retina graphics and delightful animations for stunning output quality.
Visual contact form creation. Default wireframe look to share your site at any stage of construction. Sparkle’s freeform layout means you’re never constrained by a rigid page structure or by templates. FROM BIG PICTURE TO SMALL DETAILS. Mobile device support via phone and tablet specific layouts. Live preview of your site on computers, tablets and phones, while you edit.
Built-in incremental FTP to rapidly publish to any web host. Privacy and cookie law support. Sparkle features cutting edge code and asset generation, ensuring your site will be high performance and compatible across a broad spectrum of web browsers. PLATFORM NATIVE. Familiar interface, fits right in on your Mac. Great integration with other apps, all content at your fingertips.
Born on macOS, optimized for Mojave. Backed by a product-focused company praised for its support and helpfulness. SPARKLE PRO The Sparkle Pro in-app purchase unlocks the full potential of Sparkle:. publish to an unlimited number of websites. publish an unlimited number of pages per website.
export to disk. remove page watermarking WHAT USERS SAY “We used to create comps in Photoshop for developers. With Sparkle we have our sites up and running in hours rather than weeks.” Hossein Farmani, Founder and Curator, The Lucie Awards, IPA - International Photography Awards 'We use Sparkle to create hundreds of quick landing pages to test our marketing strategies, Sparkle has saved us many hours of development time.' David Tera, Director of Marketing, IDA - Int'l Design Awards.
“I have tried out many different tools to create websites, but none of them can top Sparkle.” Philip Amour, Product Designer 'Sparkle has been awesome. A real godsend. Truly fantastic.” Sebastiaan de With, Graphic Designer “When I discovered Sparkle it just blew my mind and I felt like dancing!” Peter Bladskog, Photographer 'Sparkle is very much what I was looking for the last 10 years” Daniel Schoeneck, Design Teacher, Bern University of the Arts SUPPORT If you have questions or feedback, please email us at feedback@sparkleapp.com or visit the support website sparkleapp.com/support.html.
2.7.2. added support for multi-line button labels.
fixed canvas drawing on Mojave. fixed align/distribute.
fixed font not being loaded in some cases. fixed devices popover not showing which devices to review. fixed anchors and anchor navigation. fixed activate after consent for embed elements. fixed page import not working for some sites.
fixed menu orientation issues in some cases. fixed a few Dark Mode issues 2.7.1. fixed icons on macOS 10.9-10.11 2.7. added support for macOS Mojave and dark mode!. added new toolbar icons.
added support for publishing to International Domain Names. added drag and drop of images and video from Safari. improved offline compatible code generation. fixed FTP setup and publishing with some servers. fixed publishing cache, sometimes producing incorrect images.
fixed text wrap on Internet Explorer. fixed Pixabay link back to original photo.
fixed maps address lookup. fixed some layout and stick to top issues.
fixed font-related crashes. fixed double audio autoplay. many other minor bug fixes. 2.7.1 Sep 27, 2018.
2.7.1. fixed icons on macOS 10.9-10.11 2.7. added support for macOS Mojave and dark mode!. added new toolbar icons.
added support for publishing to International Domain Names. added drag and drop of images and video from Safari. improved offline compatible code generation. fixed FTP setup and publishing with some servers. fixed publishing cache, sometimes producing incorrect images.
fixed text wrap on Internet Explorer. fixed Pixabay link back to original photo. fixed maps address lookup. fixed some layout and stick to top issues. fixed font-related crashes.
fixed double audio autoplay. many other minor bug fixes. 2.7 Sep 24, 2018.
added support for macOS Mojave and dark mode!. added new toolbar icons. added support for publishing to International Domain Names. added drag and drop of images and video from Safari. improved offline compatible code generation.
fixed FTP setup and publishing with some servers. fixed publishing cache, sometimes producing incorrect images. fixed text wrap on Internet Explorer. fixed Pixabay link back to original photo.
fixed maps address lookup. fixed some layout and stick to top issues. fixed font-related crashes.
fixed double audio autoplay. many other minor bug fixes. 2.6.3 Jul 20, 2018. added offline-compatible code generation, as an option for export to disk. added “Open in new page' option for in-site pages.
improved generated code size by about 15%. improved IE/Edge compatibility. improved website icon support. fixed setup of publishing with some FTP servers. fixed search and multi-lingual page metadata. fixed copy/paste style of some text attributes.
fixed custom font panel on macOS 10.9. fixed dots not being shown in galleries with thumbnails.
fixed loading some custom web fonts. 2.6.1 May 28, 2018. 2.6.1:.
fixed crash on startup when system doesn’t have Times New Roman installed. fixed background not being applied on all pages. fixed compatibility with some FTP servers.
fixed images appearing lower resolution in some cases. fixed menus not creating submenus for sections. fixed text wrapping in some cases. fixed repeated font migration. fixed SVG issues on IE 8/9/10 We’re incredibly happy to release Sparkle 2.6, it has major privacy and performance enhancements, in addition to new features. We’re feeling really great about this release.
We’re cutting a few corners due to the impending European privacy regulation (GDPR/DSGVO), so translations aren’t entirely complete and the documentation still needs to be updated. We will be correcting this in the next few days. Sparkle now scores 100% on the Swedish Internet Foundation privacy checker tool, one of the most advanced on the web: This is best in class in privacy compliance. The specific combination of improvements:. all third party content is blocked until cookie consent. embedded code is by default subject to activation after cookie consent. fonts are now only ever stored in the local site, not referenced from Google fonts. the page address is by default not leaked when loading third party content We vastly improved the performance of sites published by Sparkle 2.6, generally achieving a perfect 100% score on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, an important reference point for Google’s ranking algorithm. We’re incredibly happy to release Sparkle 2.6, it has major privacy and performance enhancements, in addition to new features. We’re feeling really great about this release. We’re cutting a few corners due to the impending European privacy regulation (GDPR/DSGVO), so translations aren’t entirely complete and the documentation still needs to be updated.
We will be correcting this in the next few days. Sparkle now scores 100% on the Swedish Internet Foundation privacy checker tool, one of the most advanced on the web: This is best in class in privacy compliance. The specific combination of improvements:. all third party content is blocked until cookie consent. embedded code is by default subject to activation after cookie consent. fonts are now only ever stored in the local site, not referenced from Google fonts. the page address is by default not leaked when loading third party content We vastly improved the performance of sites published by Sparkle 2.6, generally achieving a perfect 100% score on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, an important reference point for Google’s ranking algorithm. 2.5.2:.
fixed menu changing orientation in some cases. fixed text editing crash on macOS 10.9 and 10.10. fixed text elements changing position in some cases 2.5.1:. fixed gallery labels with links and animation. fixed layout differences with pre 2.5 sites. fixed text wrap related issues. fixed text list related issues. fixed social media icon changing aspect occasionally. improved performance in many areas.
fixed many bugs Sparkle 2.5 introduces high fidelity text layout and text wrapping around image shapes, giving you unprecedented creative control over web page layout. Sparkle 2.5 is also more efficient, more robust and more compatible. added text wrapping around images. significantly improved text layout precision and accuracy.
added advanced text settings and text shadows. added image color filters. added per-image links and labels on image galleries. added Google Tag Manager support. added local business metadata editor. added HTML id customization. improved file format to reduce system resource usage.
improved video player compatibility. improved publishing compatibility with many web hosts. 2.5.1 Mar 5, 2018. 2.5.1:. fixed gallery labels with links and animation. fixed layout differences with pre 2.5 sites. fixed text wrap related issues.
fixed text list related issues. fixed social media icon changing aspect occasionally. improved performance in many areas. fixed many bugs Sparkle 2.5 introduces high fidelity text layout and text wrapping around image shapes, giving you unprecedented creative control over web page layout. Sparkle 2.5 is also more efficient, more robust and more compatible.
added text wrapping around images. significantly improved text layout precision and accuracy. added advanced text settings and text shadows.
added image color filters. added per-image links and labels on image galleries.
added Google Tag Manager support. added local business metadata editor. added HTML id customization.
improved file format to reduce system resource usage. improved video player compatibility. improved publishing compatibility with many web hosts.
2.5 Feb 27, 2018. Sparkle 2.5 introduces high fidelity text layout and text wrapping around image shapes, giving you unprecedented creative control over web page layout. Sparkle 2.5 is also more efficient, more robust and more compatible. added text wrapping around images. significantly improved text layout precision and accuracy.
added advanced text settings and text shadows. added image color filters. added per-image links and labels on image galleries. added Google Tag Manager support.
added local business metadata editor. added HTML id customization.
improved file format to reduce system resource usage. improved video player compatibility. improved publishing compatibility with many web hosts.
2.2.3 Sep 23, 2017. 2.7.2. added support for multi-line button labels. fixed canvas drawing on Mojave. fixed align/distribute.
fixed font not being loaded in some cases. fixed devices popover not showing which devices to review. fixed anchors and anchor navigation. fixed activate after consent for embed elements.
fixed page import not working for some sites. fixed menu orientation issues in some cases. fixed a few Dark Mode issues 2.7.1. fixed icons on macOS 10.9-10.11 2.7. added support for macOS Mojave and dark mode!. added new toolbar icons. added support for publishing to International Domain Names.
added drag and drop of images and video from Safari. improved offline compatible code generation. fixed FTP setup and publishing with some servers.
fixed publishing cache, sometimes producing incorrect images. fixed text wrap on Internet Explorer. fixed Pixabay link back to original photo. fixed maps address lookup. fixed some layout and stick to top issues.
fixed font-related crashes. fixed double audio autoplay.
many other minor bug fixes. Kyriba SUPPORT IS WORLD CLASS!!!
I’ve been juggling a very demanding full time job, and a hobby that I love and get paid for, for 40 years. I am a professional salesman, and on the weekends, a professional children’s entertainer. I AM NOT A WEB DEVELOPER. I need tools that are powerful intuitive and easy to use. When I need help, I NEED HELP. I’ve been using Sparkle for a couple of years now, and every time I’ve needed help, their SUPPORT team has been WORLD CLASS.
My day job is selling technology products to Fortune 500 companies—and Sparkle’s SUPPORT team is on a par with any of the SUPPORT teams that I’ve ever worked with, and I’m comparing them to teams that support mission critical multiple million dollar investments in infrastructure. In particular, Duncan Wilcox is amazing! He is responsive, tenacious, and competent. I don’t even want to say how far and above the call of duty he will go, because I don’t want to set the bar TOO high for him and Sparkle, but what he did for me today was very, very impressive. He’s an inspiration for how I want to treat my customers in all of my endeavors.
The product itself is great. But if you’re going to run a business, small or large, and count on the product, YOU NEED GREAT SERVICE—and Sparkle delivers!!!! Kyriba SUPPORT IS WORLD CLASS!!! I’ve been juggling a very demanding full time job, and a hobby that I love and get paid for, for 40 years. I am a professional salesman, and on the weekends, a professional children’s entertainer. I AM NOT A WEB DEVELOPER. I need tools that are powerful intuitive and easy to use.
When I need help, I NEED HELP. I’ve been using Sparkle for a couple of years now, and every time I’ve needed help, their SUPPORT team has been WORLD CLASS. My day job is selling technology products to Fortune 500 companies—and Sparkle’s SUPPORT team is on a par with any of the SUPPORT teams that I’ve ever worked with, and I’m comparing them to teams that support mission critical multiple million dollar investments in infrastructure.
In particular, Duncan Wilcox is amazing! He is responsive, tenacious, and competent. I don’t even want to say how far and above the call of duty he will go, because I don’t want to set the bar TOO high for him and Sparkle, but what he did for me today was very, very impressive.
He’s an inspiration for how I want to treat my customers in all of my endeavors. The product itself is great. But if you’re going to run a business, small or large, and count on the product, YOU NEED GREAT SERVICE—and Sparkle delivers!!!! Adfsljlkdfj If you want to sell items or have a login this isn’t for you I’ll start off by saying you can create very nice looking websites very easily. However, this app is missing major features. Who do you you know that wants to just create a website without having forms to sell items, have registration or login features, or the ability to have small pop-up windows for additional information? This builder doesn’t even give you the option to add simple tabs to bring other information to the foregound without loading a completely different page.
If you are looking for a truely functional ecommerce website builder this is not for you. A represenative informed me to add a shopping cart, I would have to use a 3rd party system like Shopify! Who wants to pay $80 a month to carry a few items? They are reasonably simple forms to add and create I’m supprised they left them off of this web design. I truely regret spending $79 dollars on this. Do yourself a favor and just learn wordpress. Developer Response First, very sorry about all the anger and frustration.
Just to clarify, Sparkle is a one time purchase ($39.99 or $79.99), definitely not $80 per month. Sparkle is still very much growing, and while it's very capable it doesn't do everything. Believe it or not there are many areas where Sparkle doesn't have a built-in solution, and despite this thousands of people manage to build perfectly functional and useful websites, today. Using an external solution is the norm for something as complex as commerce, I think we could have found a solution by emailing about it further. There are free or inexpensive options, depending on what you need to do exactly. Anyway Sparkle's future is bright, and you are entitled to a refund so no need for regret. Adfsljlkdfj If you want to sell items or have a login this isn’t for you I’ll start off by saying you can create very nice looking websites very easily.
However, this app is missing major features. Who do you you know that wants to just create a website without having forms to sell items, have registration or login features, or the ability to have small pop-up windows for additional information? This builder doesn’t even give you the option to add simple tabs to bring other information to the foregound without loading a completely different page. If you are looking for a truely functional ecommerce website builder this is not for you. A represenative informed me to add a shopping cart, I would have to use a 3rd party system like Shopify!
Who wants to pay $80 a month to carry a few items? They are reasonably simple forms to add and create I’m supprised they left them off of this web design. I truely regret spending $79 dollars on this.
Do yourself a favor and just learn wordpress. Developer Response First, very sorry about all the anger and frustration.
Just to clarify, Sparkle is a one time purchase ($39.99 or $79.99), definitely not $80 per month. Sparkle is still very much growing, and while it's very capable it doesn't do everything. Believe it or not there are many areas where Sparkle doesn't have a built-in solution, and despite this thousands of people manage to build perfectly functional and useful websites, today. Using an external solution is the norm for something as complex as commerce, I think we could have found a solution by emailing about it further. There are free or inexpensive options, depending on what you need to do exactly.
Anyway Sparkle's future is bright, and you are entitled to a refund so no need for regret. Yo solita juego Incredible tool!
Fantastic tool, well thought, well organized, well designed, with all kinds of built-in info on how to use it, works always, intuitive, incredible support. I love this program, not only because it does all I thought it would, but for all the things that I discovered it also can do. I put together a series of webs designed as platforms to deliver information within a framework that allows the users to understand how the information is organized and how and when to use it, and it worked like magic - I never worried about the program, it was just there, ready to do what I wanted it to do and more, allowing me to concentrate on the design of the webs. It is like driving a great car - you do not worry about the machine, you just enjoy the ride! Yo solita juego Incredible tool! Fantastic tool, well thought, well organized, well designed, with all kinds of built-in info on how to use it, works always, intuitive, incredible support.
I love this program, not only because it does all I thought it would, but for all the things that I discovered it also can do. I put together a series of webs designed as platforms to deliver information within a framework that allows the users to understand how the information is organized and how and when to use it, and it worked like magic - I never worried about the program, it was just there, ready to do what I wanted it to do and more, allowing me to concentrate on the design of the webs. It is like driving a great car - you do not worry about the machine, you just enjoy the ride!