Sandbox Friday

Sandbox 1.0 is now available to all WordPress.com blogs.

You’ll now find two Sandbox themes listed on the Presentation tab of your dashboard. “Sandbox” is the old Sandbox 0.61 version. “Sandbox-10” is the new 1.0 version.

If you’re already using Sandbox with a Custom CSS Stylesheet upgrade, you can continue using the 0.61 version of the theme. CSS designed for 0.61 generally won’t work with 1.0 and vice versa - at least, not without some careful editing and upgrading. We’ve kept the old version intact so as not to break existing custom stylesheets. Nothing will change unless you select the 1.0 version yourself.

If you intend to develop a new custom CSS stylesheet, we’d recommend using the new 1.0 version of Sandbox instead. It’s cleaner, better documented, and contains a bunch of new features.

You’ll find some documentation for the 1.0 version in the Sandbox readme.

For those not sure what Sandbox is all about:

Sandbox is a skeleton theme for WordPress. Though you can use it by itself, it’s mainly intended for dressing up with a custom CSS stylesheet. Sandbox provides all the HTML markup, with a rich semantic structure and all sorts of microformats and standards built in. You provide the stylesheet, which controls the appearance: layout, colors, fonts and so forth. It’s ideal for use with WordPress.com’s Custom CSS Upgrade.

If you’re unsure whether Sandbox and the CSS Upgrade are for you, or whether Sandbox 1.0 will work with your stylesheet, here’s how you can try them out:

1. Switch to the Sandbox 1.0 theme. You might want to create a test blog to do this so as not to interfere with your live site.
2. Visit the Presentation / Edit CSS tab of your dashboard.
3. Write or paste your CSS stylesheet in the text box.
4. Click the Preview button.
5. Edit your CSS as required, and repeat from Step 4.

Anyone can try this, you don’t have to purchase the CSS Upgrade for the Preview function to work. It’s the perfect way to find out whether or not your stylesheet does what you want.