It has been exactly four years since Yabdab's Formloom 3 was released. There were minor updates in the meantime, but now Formloom 4 has hit the market. Was a major new release necessary? Apparently it was: there are numerous new additions. Is the new plugin worth nearly twice the price? Decide for yourself:

There's a long list of new features for Formloom 4. The list isn't as long as the new features introduced with version three, but still worthy of mention.
Here's what Mike lists as being new:

So let's be honest. I never used Formloom before. I tested the beta version of V4 and was impressed. Then, after seeing Yabdab's demo page, I decided that yes, Formloom beats the trousers (pants for those on the wrong side of the pond) off FormSnap and have purchased the plugin.
Why? Because the feature list is way longer (read: 'better') and I was impressed with the new page break feature for longer forms.

Formloom is a plugin. A Formloom Helper Stack is included with the plugin which allows you to add your completed form to any stacks page. The UI, even though the forms themselves can get very complicated, is easy to understand.
More complicated forms can be divided into 'subpages' and navigation dots are automatically added so that the user can see how many pages there are. Moving backwards or forwards within a form, or accidentally refreshing the page does not delete any information that was previously entered.

If you use Formsnap, there is a special crossgrade price available for Formloom. You might find it useful to check the demo out!

The age old problem. We have masses of content to be integrated onto a page, but how do we do so and retain some semblance of design. The obvious solution, of course, is some sort of tabbed content, or an accordion. Tabs and accordions, however, are not always ideal and seldom look really attractive, on top of which – some visitors don't realise that there is more content hidden behind the tabs, so what about a slider?

JW's Weaver's Space has gained a new stack – Horizon a stack that scrolls content into view when required.
We've seen sliders before, but Horizon is different, it can scroll content horizontally either when your visitor slides the scrollbar (or drags on mobile devices), or automatically. Automatically means that your content can scroll constantly (and pause on hover), or – especially subtle – scroll as the page is scrolled.
If Horizon is set to scroll manually, a badge can be displayed "Scroll Me" (or a text of your choice) so that even the least experienced visitor gets a hint that there's more content available.
Horizon will accept any stack [combination] that you care to throw at it, but it is also TotalCMS-ready, i.e. it has options to add a Blog List, a Gallery, or a Post Gallery.


Stack settings
Horizon Container
Start Position – %
Enable Scroll Hint
Hint Text
Collapse in Edit Mode

Horizon Scrollbar
Scrollbar – Default, Hide, Styled
Show on Hover
Scrollbar Height – Height, Gap (px)
Scrollbar Colours

Horizon Cards
Height – Auto, px, %
Width – Auto, px, %
Width – %
Min/Max – px
Margin
Padding

Animation – None, On Page Scroll, Loop, Loop on Hover

Horizon is a great way to display masses of information and even the most inexperienced visitor can hardly miss that there's more content to view.

Websites that display calendars have two core functions: They show upcoming events and they display event details. Ideally, the calendar should be aesthetically pleasing with an uncluttered user interface. Beyond good looks, the design should help you tell different kinds of events apart and present a bird’s eye view of them at any screen width.

Kalendar from Weavium not only fulfils all of the above, it also offers tons of styling options and supports 20+ different languages. Kalendar can display public calendars from Google, Outlook, or any other calendar that has an iCal address, and event details written in markdown will automatically be converted. And, of course, Kalendar looks great on mobile devices too.

You can, of course, also create calendars and events within RapidWeaver and publish them directly.
Kalendar can load calendars from multiple sources at the same time and if you feel so inclined, you could display a Google, an iCal (sorry, Apple Calendar) and a manually published calendar etc. at the same time.

Kalendar is extremely simple to set up; just add the iCal-URL of the calendar that you wish to display; configure the colours, fonts, sizes and breakpoints – and in typical Weavium fashion, there's hardly anything that can not be configured – and you're good to go.

I already have two calendar solutions for RapidWeaver, but the next time I need to publish a list of events, Kalendar will most likely be my 'go-to' solution, most especially due to the configurability (i.e. markdown) of the events.

After Duck Soup, the world around Marten Claridge remained silent, except that every Wednesday, he was explaining live to an elite group, how to take Maximum Advantage of the Maximum Design pack. For the last month or so, these video conferences have targeted Quantum Edge (amongst other themes) and said elite group has been aah-ing and ooh-ing and rubbing their hands expectantly.

The wait is over. Duck Soup has a sibling and if you thought Maximum Design was cool, you'll find Quantum Edge has been chilled a couple of degrees more.
Quantum Edge began life as what was probably the single most complicated RapidWeaver project ever produced. In the meantime, Marten has taken sensible steps to split the project into more bite-sized modules. Five of them.

As with the Max Design pack, Quantum Edge is predominantly based on Sections modules; standalone, multi-purpose, full-width content containers that can be quickly deployed to make an instant impact on both your page and your clients. There are eighteen pages of these modules, but you don't have to purchase all eighteen of them; instead you can opt to acquire just five, or ten of them and, as a seasoned BWD user, work out for yourself how the remaining modules were created…

This time round, Marten's new package doesn't simply present Sections modules; there is a module with complete pages, one with cards, one that devotes itself to footers and one specifically aimed at the iPhone.
You can, of course, secure the complete bundle at a reduced price. But be warned: it will take you a whole day just to peruse your purchase and a month, or two, to get to grips with (i.e. understand) what Marten has put together! Quantum Edge takes advantage of the very latest BWD stacks to present subtle animations and 3D effects never before seen in RapidWeaver.

If you're looking to impress a new client, or just want to WOW the visitors to your new home page, Quantum Edge has everything you need to be able to do so easily.
Copy and Paste one of Marten's modules, replace the content with your own and the wow-effect is guaranteed!

Whichever module(s) you decide to procure, when you open your download, you'll discover that you have a Foundation, a Foundry and a Universal version for both RW7 and RW8. You'll also discover a download link to all images used within your project and – if SVGs were used in the project – you'll find all the SVGs too!

Be sure to watch Marten's tuition video on the demo page. Then, if you then still have queries, feel free to join his regular Wednesday meetings and ask any questions you may have…

The 'experts' currently agree unanimously that CSS Grids are the future of web design. In a couple of years time, those same experts will most likely come up with a different description of where the web is heading, but currently CSS Grids is IT!
But how are we supposed to take advantage of CSS Grids in RapidWeaver?

At the end of last year, Will Woodgate began work on a stack named Intrinsic. Today, the final version of Intrinsic has been released and it's going to alter your concept of page layout.

During the 90s, if we wanted to build a more complicated layout, we were forced to use tables. Then CSS came along and seemingly solved all our layout problems, we discovered, however, that CSS wasn't up to the task of positioning those more complicated elements. Flexbox is great, but only for one dimensional layouts, it doesn't really help with those 2D layouts, so now we've moved on to CSS Grids.
Intrinsic from Stacks4Stacks will build the most intricate CSS Grids for you!

Intrinsic is a little more complicated than your average stack. It can assist you in building complete responsive pages, but you'll need to study the way that it works. There's new terminology that you may need to learn, but once you get to grips with Intrinsic's layout, you'll find that it's actually quite straightforward.

Here's an extremely simple example:


And here are the settings that were necessary:

In the example above, I have defined a two-column layout. Column one is 600px wide; column two is set to 'auto'. I have named the Grid Items (the stack containers shown in red) 'one, two, three, side and footer'.
The Grid Template Areas is set to 'one side', 'two side' 'three side' 'footer footer'. The resulting layout displays the Grid Items one, two and three below each other, with the 'side' Item to the right of them. the 'footer' fills the two last columns.

The Grid Template Areas describe your layout. Intrinsic supports up to twelve columns and unlimited rows. When you drag a new Intrinsic stack into your page, the Grid Template Areas contains the description for a twelve column layout.

Each Grid Item must have a unique alphanumeric ID. Either letter/number combinations or short words. Numbers must be combined with at least one letter.
'A B' 'C B' 'D B' 'E E', for example, or 'one side' 'two side' 'three side' 'footer footer' would both result in the layout shown above (I personally prefer the short names, because they help identify the Grid Items more easily).

You'll notice in the screenshot above that the breakpoint is set to 'Screens > 0px Wide'. Each time you add a Grid Breakpoints Child Stack, you can redefine your layout above the breakpoint that you set in the stack settings.

MUCH more complicated designs than the example above can be built with Intrinsic. Just take a look here at one of Will's demo pages. The page is fully responsive, as is the example on the S4S Intrinsic page.

Intrinsic Grid Items can contain any stack that you want to throw at them.
Spend a little time to discover how Intrinsic works and you'll completely rethink the way that your pages can be played out!

NOTE: to view the Intrinsic demo file, you'll need to download the demo version of the Themeflood RWSkinz theme.