RSS feeds are a great way to display information from various different sites within a compact layout. Recently some RSS stacks have, for some reason, stopped working. Will Woodgate's new Newsroom stack works like a breeze and integrates seamlessly into your chosen theme.

Newsroom from Stacks4Stacks is simple to use and is more flexible than many RSS stacks. "How can an RSS stack be flexible?" I hear you ask…

Well, aside from the fact that it automatically takes its CSS formatting from the theme you're using, you can also use custom CSS to add more 'pep'. But RSS feeds also offer a wealth of different information along with the news itself; information such as Headline; Description; Author; Date Published; Tags and Categories and quite a few details more.
With Newsroom, you're not forced to publish this data as it is delivered, but can choose the order in which it is displayed and even choose to hide elements that you don't wish to publish.
Obviously, when an item is clicked, it will open the original post. With Newsroom, you can choose to open the post in the current widow, or in a new tab. But that's not all. There are eleven different options for the display from a simple list of entries to a zebra-striped table.

And then there are further settings for Header format, Header alignment, Header style (B,I,Upper Case etc.), Item formatting and much more.
Newsroom has child stacks, so you can add various feed sources to a single column, or you can add new Newsroom stacks to a multi-column layout.

You should, by now, be convinced that Newsroom is a really flexible RSS reader. If not – download the demo and take it for a spin!

Have you ever been in the situation where your client wishes to include reams and reams of information on a single web page? The problem isn't adding the information, the problem is adding the information whilst keeping the page compact and accessible.

Unlimitab is Weavium's latest stack and as the name would suggest, the stack allows you to add unlimited tabs to an area of your page, thus keeping your page compact whilst allowing whole catalogues of information to be included. Seriously – the whole house, including the kitchen sink! I gave up after adding 20 tabs and I'm quite certain that you won't need more…
… especially when you consider loading times. Your tabbed content is all contained within the HTML which, from an SEO point of view is good, but if you've included images within each tab? I suppose that's your client's decision.

So you've dropped an Unlimitab stack onto your page, added a number of child stacks and filled them with content. When you take a look at the preview, you'll find a navigation bar above your content where you can either click the tab labels or the navigation arrows left and right. Unless you've altered the default settings, you'll also find a dropdown menu which is especially useful for larger amounts of content.
By default the navbar is black. The colour is set globally in the in the main stack settings, however, it's possible to override each of the default settings in the child stack settings so that each child tab-stack can be individually coloured.
The tabs can have a set max width and the height will adjust individually depending on the amount of content. This is pretty much the default behaviour of all tab stacks, but it would sometimes be nice to be able to set a default height and have overflowing content scrollable. IMO

Unlimitab is a neat stack and the ideal solution when you have so much content that you're at a loss as to what to do with it. If you're in a similar predicament, Unlimitab is 25% off for a limited time. Grab it now!

When used to saying 'manipulate', 'menupilate' is a bit of a mouthful, but Menupilator is the name the latest stack from Marathia's stacks. Jeroen has a thing for allowing you to manipulate your site's navigation and Menupilator is the fourth of his stacks that can alter menu functions.

Annoying fact: Your website's 'Home' button will usually reload your home page if clicked when you are already on the home page.The same will happen if you click on the link of any page that you are already on. Confusing, or what? Menupilator can deactivate the 'Home' link and any other link on your site to avoid confusion.
Does your client want you to add a new page to an already bursting navigation bar? You could shorten the page titles in the page settings to make room for another menu item, but this might damage SEO results. You could, however, shorten the page titles using Menupilator and leave the SEO results intact (I just altered a page title from "Wir über uns" to "About Us" with three mouse clicks).

If you need to highlight a specific menu item e.g. so that a visitor immediately sees how to contact you, Menupilator can quickly do the job. Menupilator can also trigger a lightbox instead of opening a new page. It could also trigger a dropdown that offers different language versions of your site.

Here's a list of everything the new stack can do. Menupilator comes in handy when you want to:

• put extra emphasis on one ore more menu items (by changing their style and/or color)
• disable a menu item (e.g. to turn it into a placeholder for submenu items)
• make a menu item do something that cannot be defined by RapidWeaver (trigger a lightbox, a shopping cart etc.)
• link a menu item to the corresponding page in another language
• make a menu item behave differently on one (or some) page(s) only
• remove a menu item on one (or some) page(s) only
• make a more colourful menu

Note: Menupilator combines the functionality of the NoLink, the NoCurrent and the Lang­Menu stacks from Marathia's stacks, but adds functionality not in included with any of of those stacks.

Damn, I recently purchased a stack specifically to alter a menu's function. If only Menupilator had been around then, it's much more flexible.

Until very recently, applying a background image to a page section involved either a large sized pixel image, or some relatively complicated setup. Enter 1LD (otherwise known as One Little Designer) who want to make the addition of SVG background images simpler with Image Sector.

Image Sector allows you to create new, shapable background images for RapidWeaver like seldom before. And without the hassle.
SVG Scalable Vector Graphics. Images that can be incredibly tiny, but can scale up (or down) to any size without losing their crisp edges.

For some time now, we have had the possibility of adding SVG images to RapidWeaver and nowadays even MS browsers are able to display said images.
Obviously SVG is ideal for use as section masks or section dividers and 1LD resolves the problem that those little grey cells may have when trying to work out how to implement said masks.
What do we need? Image Sector and some page sections…
The simplest transitions (obviously) are those that divide a page horizontally.

Image Sector's delivers ten different shapes by default, plus the option to add your own custom shape. The latter, of course involves the use of Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or the included free shape tool. With just a few mouse clicks, you can divide your page just as you wish. The added advantage is that each of the SVG masks that you use can be used as an image frame. Your text floats over a masked image and looks incredible!

Image Sector delivers more than 30 pre-designed presets, plus over 600 icon paths. With the added advantage that you can design your own masks anything is possible!

And – if you're stuck for an SVG and the image that you have in mind is too complicated, you can also use an image (ideally a png) to mask your section. If you use the appropriate colour combination, your content may even run into and over the image and still look good.

To see the full capabilities of Image Sector, please visit the demo page, your sections will never look the same again!

Last week Weavium released a set of stacks under the title 'Fluid' On the webpage there are two interesting statements 'The build tool that will change RapidWeaver forever' AND 'If you can dream it, you can achieve it, with Fluid'. I also read somewhere that there's a learning curve involved.

The internet is no longer a static entity. With the abundance of information to be displayed in the confined space of a web page, it makes sense to hide some details until the user really needs it. Aside from that, moving elements can make a page more interesting. The Fluid demo page is extremely interesting with elements that move when clicked and slide into view when the page is scrolled — the page simply begs for your attention.
But Fluid isn't simply about motion, it allows you, as the demo page shows, to build complete web pages that include floating menus and most of the page content you need.
Using the Fluid Suite, you can add Buttons, Icons, Images and Text in addition to the default Fluid stack the Fluid Container, State Manager and Trigger.

The main Fluid stack supplies the JS necessary for any transitions whilst the Fluid Container will accommodate any of the other stacks. The Trigger stack defines when/how a transition should take place and the State Manager allows you to define the transition.
Just about any imaginable state is possible; from simply changing an element's colour upon hover, over opacity, rotation, zoom or positioning etc. on hover, click or page movement. There are many more transitions (z-Index, Object Size etc.) available.

So back to the 'learning curve'. After viewing the initial demo project with 11 pages of examples, I felt a little daunted. I contacted Skyler and he supplied a project with five pages that made things a whole lot more understandable!

Three things that you'll need to remember before you commit to Fluid:
Fluid is an amazing product that will allow you to build RW pages that you never imagined before.
Fluid has a fairly steep learning curve that is aided by Skyler's new demo project.
Less is more! You might want to let rip and animate everything on you newest RW pages. But don't overdo it!
Too much movement eventually distracts from your content, in addition to which the JS necessary to move all of your page elements can quickly become quite large.
Your project size might not matter to users in areas with good internet accessibility, but always remember that the JS necessary for any animation adds to the project size and your product might be viewed on a mobile phone or in other areas where every Kb costs your visitor valuable $.