Sparkle One

iWork–like web design tool made Mojave–friendly

About $50 From River SRL, sparkleapp.com Needs OS X 10.9 or later If Apple still made a web design tool as part of its iWork suite, it would probably be a lot like Sparkle One: aesthetically smart, easy to use, and in tune with the latest features in macOS.

To that end, version 2.7 adds new features aimed at supporting macOS Mojave including a Dark Mode version of the interface and Touch Bar compatibility. Adding text boxes, images, buttons, and other content like maps, audio and gallery is straightforward. And Sparkle One even supports Live Photos. However, to use them, you have to export both the image and video file from Photos.

Video can be hosted on your own server, or you can embed videos from YouTube or Vimeo. And you can customize your site layout for different devices.

Launching Sparkle One for the first time, and looking at a blank page with dozens of buttons and menu options will be daunting for much of the application’s target market. On the plus side, the documentation on the developer’s website is comprehensive and well written and even goes beyond how to use the app to the basics of web design. And there are lots of templates to download from the Sparkle Cafe website. However, most of these templates are single page. So if you want to use one on a multipage site, you’ll have to duplicate the main page and then remove elements you don’t need, then add those you do. It’s not ideal, but neither is it an insurmountable problem. Compared to the themes available in the likes of RapidWeaver, though, templates in Sparkle One are nearly as easy to use. That would be fine, if Sparkle One beat its main competitor in other areas, but it doesn’t. And it has a significant limitation: its base version only allows you to create one site. If you want to build more, you’ll have to bite the bullet and pay for the Pro version.

Sparkle One has some neat touches, and there’s a free download available so you can try it out, but if you plan on building more than one site, it’s hard for us to recommend it.

the bottom line. A friendly and easy–to–use website builder. But if you plan on making more than one website, look elsewhere.

Sparkle One lets you build one website and add elements like text, images, and video.

There are several customizable designs available for download. However, they are limited in scope.