New in Sparkle 2.8, a Sketch plugin to turn artboards into fast websites

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New in Sparkle 2.8, a Sketch plugin to turn artboards into fast websites - Published on 05/20/19

River SRL today releases Sparkle 2.8, a important update to their powerful visual web design application for macOS. Sparkle allows anyone to create modern, beautiful, GDPR-complaint websites in a fully visual way, The Sketch Export to Sparkle plugin lets designers transfer a whole Sketch artboard into Sparkle. Thanks to Sparkle's freeform layout engine, the artboard is instantly turned it into a working website. The plugin makes use of vector formats such as SVG as much as possible and more.

Firenze, Italy - Independent development team, River SRL today is proud to announce the release and immediate availability of Sparkle 2.8, an important update to their visual web designer for macOS systems. Sparkle allows anyone to easily build beautiful websites with no knowledge of HTML or CSS, and no need to be restrained by canned templates or pre-built layouts.

The flagship feature in Sparkle 2.8 is a plugin for Sketch. The Export to Sparkle plugin lets designers transfer a whole Sketch artboard into Sparkle. Thanks to Sparkle's freeform layout engine, the artboard is instantly turned it into a working website. The plugin makes use of vector formats such as SVG as much as possible, to create a fast loading page.

Sparkle is a Mac app that enables the creation of a successful website. A modern Mac user interface makes simple things simple, complex things approachable, with fine control over the looks and the features of the website.

"Many designers are comfortable using Sketch to create a website design, then there's the big question mark of handing off the design to a developer", says River SRL co-founder Duncan Wilcox. "With Sparkle's new Sketch plugin, turning the layout into a live website is a matter of minutes. It's that fast."

Sparkle packs great value: it integrates all the media management and integration with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, maps, fonts, stock photos and patterns. It then produces optimized websites that score high on performance and SEO, while ensuring compliance and locking down visitor privacy.

With the Sparkle 2.8 release, River SRL introduced a new low pricing tier of $29.99 USD, and an option to subscribe to Sparkle Pro for $71.99 USD per year.

Features Include:
* A fully freeform canvas that makes the app the perfect choice for visual thinkers
* Design responsive websites for desktop, tablet, and smartphone screens
* Easy access to hundreds of web fonts
* Drag-and-drop to add images, videos, audio, downloadable files, and more
* Simple, yet powerful visual contact form creator
* Built-in Google Maps generator
* Live preview the site on any computer or mobile device
* Easy integration with Shopify, PayPal, and many other payment solutions
* Advanced SEO tools, analytics and tag manager
* Twitter, Facebook and Instagram integration
* Best in class in privacy compliance
* Built-in site verification, robots.txt, and sitemap.xml
* Produces fully-optimized code
* Built-in incremental FTP capabilities
* Native macOS interface
* Closely integrated with other Mac apps
* Supports English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese
* Much more

New in Sparkle 2.8:
* A new Sketch plugin to copy a design over to Sparkle
* A new Instagram element, and Instagram support in images and galleries
* Unsplash stock photo integration, in addition to pixabay.com
* The Photos Extension, to create Sparkle image galleries from Photos
* A site search element and search results page
* New stick to top behaviors
* Pinning of a group to the bottom of the browser window
* SVG support for box backgrounds
* Stock and custom patterns for box backgrounds
* The option to make a text box scrollable
* Free gradient angle for box backgrounds
* Proportional width menu items
* Support for removing backgrounds in images shot with portrait mode
* Support for Continuity Camera
* Improved canvas drawing performance for complex layouts (macOS 10.13 or later)
* Pinch to zoom in the canvas
* Faster startup performance for large projects
* Faster SVG rendering performance
* Basic map mode that doesn't require API key
* Display of publishing progress activity
* The ability to convert from one element type to another
* Text style re-ordering
* The ability to import a website from the local disk
* The Audio player now stops other audio players on the page
* Better support for fixed background images on Android browsers
* Better video player compatibility
* Better page import accuracy
* New publishing setup diagnostics

Users love Sparkle:

"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

Sparkle Free is a full-featured totally free app, allowing users to publish a single site, with a total of 3 pages. A "Made with Sparkle" banner will be present on the pages in the free version. Sparkle Basic is available as a one-time $29.99 USD purchase, and allows publishing of a single site, with a 10 page limit but no Sparkle branding. Sparkle One is available as a one-time $49.99 USD purchase, and allows publishing of a single site, no page limit or Sparkle branding and adds the site search component. Sparkle Pro is available as a one-time $119.99 USD purchase, and allows publishing unlimited sites, and the ability to export sites to disk with no page limit and no branding, plus the site search component and the instagram component. Sparkle Pro is also available as a yearly $71.99 USD subscription. Multi-User licenses are also available.

System Requirements:
* macOS 10.9 Mavericks or later
* Optimized for macOS 10.14 Mojave
* 61.2 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Sparkle 2.8 is free and is available worldwide from the Sparkle website. The app is also available through the Mac App Store in the Graphics and Design category. Expanded capabilities are available as one-time purchases or as a yearly subscription. Redeem codes are available to journalists upon request. Contact Duncan Wilcox for more information.

Sparkle 2.8: https://sparkleapp.com
Sketch Plugin: https://sketch-to-web.com
Download Sparkle: https://sparkleapp.com/download
Purchase Sparkle: https://sparkleapp.com/store/
Media Assets: https://sparkleapp.com/presskit


Based in beautiful Florence, Italy, River SRL is a new privately funded company founded in 2011. With a passion for user interface design and utility, River brings five years of Cocoa development experience to the iPhone platform. Copyright 2011-2019 River SRL. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.


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