7 ms·

The website takes me back to a certain era of computing -- the explanation of how sandboxing works is paired to a bunch of icons mostly of their time, and the i

• userbinator 7y ago
  An era when websites were fast-loading, simple, information-dense and distinctively-styled yet still very readable.
  • qwerty1234599 7y ago
    What? The webpage is filled with a useless wall of text, of which maybe 20% is relevant. The rest just makes it hard for average people to figure out what exactly the software is and how to download it.
    • kick 7y ago
      "Download" is literally the eighth word on the page, and fourth word on the navigation bar. If a person can't see that, they're destined for a Darwin award.
      • oefrha 7y ago
        Now, click on the eighth word and try to figure out how to actually download. I'll wait. (And compare it to a modern site, say, firefox.com or chrome.com.)
        • y4mi 7y ago
          took me 3 seconds... but i was trained by living through that era. nowadays people will probably miss the download link by mistaking it with some advertisements or something similar. they look just like it nowadays... though back then, the ads where mostly Flash so you it wasnt auto-filtered by your brain like it is now :)
        • toby- 7y ago
          Took me about 2 seconds. The large, bold "Click to download Sandboxie version 5.31.6 from ..." helped. ;) Or, under the <h1> title "Downloads", the bolded table header "Download from" with the "Download from this site" link. Good design doesn't require a huge, centred, flashing "DOWNLOAD!" button. This seems clear and uncluttered enough to me.
          • chalupa-man 7y ago
            I guarantee you this design would confuse a lot of people. Imagine you're not the computer savviest person around, how you'd read this. - The large, bolded "Click to download" text isn't clickable, like pretty much every other "Click to..." prompt you've seen. - After a moment of confusion you think oh okay, there'll be a list of links to places I can download it from then. But there isn't. There's just the product logo. Download the product from itself, maybe? But why is it written like there's supposed to be a list? Hm. - Oh wait, after "Download the latest version" there's a separate section called "Downloads", that's where the downloads must be. - Okay, down there after a while there's bold text that says "Download", but that's not clickable, nor is the text next to it that says "Sandboxie Installer." Keep reading. - Ah, okay, here's a table with a single row for some reason, with a nice link "Download from this site." - Wait, why did "Download from this site" take me to a completely different site? The address in the bar is totally different, the design is totally different, I've never heard of this new site before and it wants me to give them my job title, full name, company name, and zip code. Is this a popup ad? Is this a scam? I thought I was downloading it from that site I was just on. Incidentally it doesn't matter as the form doesn't understand my country's zip code system and won't accept it.
            • toby- 7y ago
              Reading through your comment and looking back at the Download page, I think you're right. The linkified image is especially poor design (although, I think the intention becomes more obvious when there are multiple linkified images to common software-download destinations, e.g. SourceForge or FileHippo, as (IIRC) was previously the case). I suppose it may just boil down to a fundamental difference of opinion; I don't really think it's necessary for every website to try to accommodate entirely non-tech savvy users — especially a site offering software that already assumes existing technical ability (if you can't negotiate an antiquated download page, you're probably going to struggle to use a lot of software of that era, including Sandboxie).
        • numismatex 7y ago
          took me a whole 5 seconds. you're just slow, and i took a xanax a bit ago to boot
      • greenhatman 7y ago
        The text is too small and spans most of the screen. Difficult to read on big monitors. Reading that grey block on mobile is also really straining. I actually just gave up and came to read the comments instead. The word 'download' is exactly the same font as everything else. So it's hard to find. Why not have a button that stands out? There are 2 links called 'click here'. So you have the read the surrounding text before knowing where you want to click. I can't think of a good reason not to have a clear call to action button that stands out from the rest of the page. Compared to almost any modern site, this is really bad.
        • ubercow13 7y ago
          I think you’re overrating modern web design. For example recently I have been frustrated at the amount of web sites I have been on which “respond” to the geometry of the browser by completely removing essential navigational elements of the site and giving the user no indication that anything is missing. This makes for example using the site in a web browser tiled to half the screen width on a laptop impossible. This site even works perfectly on mobile, because it doesn’t change to simplify itself to the point of being unusable, like many modern web sites do, often even refusing to stop doing so when choosing “request desktop site” in the mobile browser.
        • BlueGh0st 7y ago
          > Difficult to read on big monitors. I'm on a 55 inch screen and have no problems with this website. In fact, I much prefer it to websites that only fill the center third with content.
        • userbinator 7y ago
          Why not have a button that stands out? I've been conditioned to almost subconsciously ignore "big green download buttons", because the vast majority of them are fake.
          • greenhatman 7y ago
            Then you're probably on scammy sites too often. The only sites I know of that does that are pirate sites.
      • wpietri 7y ago
        You cut out the important part of what you're replying to. They'll only download it if they know what it is. For that, the page is poorly designed. It wasn't until I got down to the very bottom that I understood the user value proposition, which is explained in the review quote: "[...] Sandboxie, which lets you run programs independent of the rest of your system. That way they can't infect, access, or otherwise interfere with your Windows installation [...]"
        • TheRealPomax 7y ago
          Sorry, are we ignoring the fact that the primary nav, which any person familiar with "web sites" since the 90's knows to look at, has both "help & faq" _and_ "how it works" as options? Are we talking about people who don't understand that if you want the actual details rather than the summary, that's not going to be on the landing page, but on their own dedicated pages?
          • wpietri 7y ago
            We're not "ignoring" that. It's just that some of us are familiar with how fickle users are. Anybody making a product they actually want people to use should have a home page that explains early on the user problem and how the product solves that problem, and then makes it easy for people to get the product. As an example, take this Android tool I just downloaded: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.dvilleneuve.lockito&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.dvilleneuve... Very early on, the copy says: "Lockito allows you to make your phone follow a fake itinerary, with total control over the speed, altitude and GPS signal accuracy. You can also simulate a static location. This is the must-have tool for any Android developers who needs to test geofencing-based apps or just test his app on different locations." It's a clear, concise description of what the tool does, who needs it, and why. If you don't have that, will some people still rummage around and download your thing regardless? Sure. But fewer of them. And here, for a product that people may not know they need, it could be a lot fewer.
        • imtringued 7y ago
          I don't get it. The people who made the website clearly decided that an announcement that primarily affects the existing user base was more important than explaining them what sandboxie is for the ten millionth time.
    • self_awareness 7y ago
      Still better than a YouTube clip about it, because text at least can be skimmed
    • tjoff 7y ago
      Not great. But I haven't seen a better page designed in 2019. It is not hard to figure out what it is, apart from the news announcement and a download link it says it right there with one sentence. Want to know how it works. Press "How it works". Want do download it? Press "Download". Contrast that with today where you have to figure out which filter bubble the author of the page is in. Such niche questions such as: Which OS does this work on? Which language is this library for? Can be quite tiresome to find out...
    • bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      Does the average person really want to download a tool that helps them sandbox windows applications? I mean, maybe they should want to, but do they want to?
      • leppr 7y ago
        For the average teenager downloading Windows warez, totally.
    • tomc1985 7y ago
      The only useless "wall of text" is the gray box discussing their open sourcing. The rest of the homepage is tight and punchy
    • sh87 7y ago
      I like this webpage. There are no ads, no popups, did not ask for my email, did not try to send me notifications, did not ask me to register, did not autoplay a video, did not hijack my scroll behavior, on parallax BS, no images of an open office in the background. In short NO NON-SENSE. It loaded in under 1s (for me), has all the important stuff right there at the top. I do not want any product page to do anything more than this. Please.
      • Viliam1234 7y ago
        It asks for your e-mail later, when you click to download Sandboxie.
        • sh87 7y ago
          From the same (only) page that asks for email, company, etc. > Due to requirements of the U.S. government, export compliance is now mandatory when downloading our software. Complete the form to proceed with your download. That's totally fine by me.
    • TheRealPomax 7y ago
      Fun fact: you can have pages of useless text and it'll still load faster than a single jpeg. This page might look like it's from another era, but it also has the benefits of that era: - it actually loads fast - it works without scripts. - it has no ads. - it has no tracking beyond page analytics. If those are the benefits, then please, give me more shitty looking websites like this for all the other essential software that should be found on any sane professional's machine, and any "taking personal responsibility" home user's machine.
    • imtringued 7y ago
      Half of the content on the page is literally titled "What We Do" with a download link above it. You're clearly disliking the design to the point that your criticism doesn't even make sense, if that's your complaint then say it outright instead of hiding it behind a lie.
  • mrmonkeyman 7y ago
    I don't trust it and the information is about as low-density as they come. 1/10
  • diminoten 7y ago
    Less featureful, inefficient, unintuitive, difficult to maintain or even build, impenetrable to laypersons, garbage.
  • kmlx 7y ago
    "websites were fast-loading" i lived thru that era. how were they fast on 56kbps modem connections? i clearly remember having to leave my pc on all night to download a single mp3. for websites i would usually grab a book and read a few pages while the site loaded.
    • raverbashing 7y ago
      No thousands of cookies/trackers (for most sites) Few third party js files Optimized images And the fact the site had to actually open on 56k modems
      • lazyasciiart 7y ago
        So....they were slow, but smaller amounts of code was involved? That's not the same as being fast.
        • WaxProlix 7y ago
          Connection was slow, pages were (relatively) fast. Not hard to understand.
          • lone_haxx0r 7y ago
            They weren't fast by any stretch of the word. There was no one with a good connection to experience it fast, so it can't be called fast.
            • eitland 7y ago
              I've mostly had good internet connection since 2004, so I know. Pages were better before this modern SPA thing that ironically get sold in to improve user experience. End of discussion I guess..?
              • eternalny1 7y ago
                I have begrudgingly been pulled into SPAs as a developer, and at first I was very skeptical. Now that I see what things like Angular can do, with lazy-loaded components, and only downloading JSON data and letting the client render the DOM, my pages are actually much faster and the UX is vastly better. Yes, you need to download the Angular libs, but so many pages use them now they are likely cached, and are negligible in size for a fast connection. After that, it's client-side routing and downloading mostly just downloading JSON from a REST API. You don't need to server to push a 5,000 row table with all the mark-up, you just grab that data and have the browser construct your table. And yes, you can still copy/paste the URL. And save the page as HTML. And everything else you can do with a "non-SPA" page. YMMV.
  • dsco 7y ago
    The times have changed. This website now needs pinch to zoom to be readable on smaller screens. Also the text is centered across the entire page, reducing legibility. What I remember from that era is Flash, living through the shit show that was browser quirks and dealing with a front-end stack with no foundation in computer science.
• aritmo 7y ago
  On mobile, the centered text is difficult to read. :-( I still do not know what features of Windows are used to get this software.
• chapium 7y ago
  Its pretty refreshing not needing to scroll past a full page logo. I'd argue that this spartan design speaks volumes to their potential clients. Fully pragmatic engineering with no frills.