Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight. In web design, we have come to understand parallax to be two objects on a page that scroll at different speeds. Usually a background and a foreground content.

Parallaxer from Shaking The Habitual is the second take on parallax effects in as many weeks and it adds a new dimension to the effect we've become used to. Not only can the background images scroll up the page, they can also scroll to the left or the right. And, because the background image is not defined as a CSS BG, it works on mobiles*. The fact that the image is a 'normal' image, also means that you can add Alt tags to improve your SEO results.

In its default state, Parallaxer adds an image to your page that scrolls slower than the rest of the page. You can set the scroll speed between 10 and 50. A stack container can be activated that allows you to add stacks to be inserted over the background image, either centered, or in one of the four corners.

Stack settings
Image – Warehoused, Local
Alt Text
Restrict Height?
Effect Scale – 10–50
Direction – Up, Left, Right
Add Content – Deactivated by default
Placement – Four corners or Centred

Until 20th June 2018 a discount of 20% can be had by using the code: sth-ninja-parallaxer.

*Tested on Android using Chrome and Firefox

A left-aligned text on the right-hand side of the page. That's easy enough. Drop it into the last column of a three-column stack. You can even add a background image.
But what if you want the content to be exactly 40% of the page height, with the content vertically centred and with a colour overlay over the image.
Now things begin to get complicated. It's possible by nesting the right combination of stacks, or with Stack Me, a new stack from Der Flinke Grafiker, otherwise known as DeFliGra.

Tommy's new Stack Me stack will help you align your content flexibly, letting you break out of the constraints of the sometimes inflexible 12-column layouts of framework based themes such as Foundation and Foundry.

Stack Me adds a full width section to your page and let's you add child stacks with different content: Header, Text, Image, Float and Button. Stack Me's width may, of course, be constrained by dropping it into a container stack.
The Header, Text, Image and Button child stacks are straightforward, the Float stack adds a text stack with a container for other stacks. The child stacks can be combined as needed. The only thing missing is a child stack for third party stacks.
However, noticing that the child stacks are standard Stacks 3 stacks, I simply dragged in some other stacks – and was surprised to find that that works too.


Once you've added your choice of content, you may define Stack Me's minimum height and the content alignment, add an optional image background – which may be fixed – and a colour overlay. The setup is fast and simple and saves you the trouble of experimenting with nested stacks.


Stack settings
Fix Background Image – >1025 px On, <1025 px Off
Min Height – %
Vertical [orientation] – Top, Centre, Bottom
Horizontal – Left, Centre, Right
Padding – T, B, L, R – %
Colour On/Off – BG, Txt, Link, MO (Mouse Over)
Colour On/Off – H1—H4 individually
Colour Store – Tommy's famous colour reservoir. Save up to four default colours and drag them into the colour wells above
Target – Add an ID to scroll to the Stack Me container
Breakpoint
Tile – Remove Min Height, 100%, My Choice [custom]
Custom CSS – it wouldn't be a DeFliGra stack without a bucket full of custom CSS containers

Stack Me is a great stack for when you need to align your content exactly where you want it, but with the addition of custom backgrounds.

A few years ago, I was reading a long text on the web and after a couple of seconds I thought 'hello, I thought the background colour was a subtle yellow, now it's a subtle teal' so I switched my attention to the background and found that every couple of seconds, the colour would change – almost imperceptibly. 'This is cool' I thought – 'I want it!"
I looked for a stack that might be able to help, but 'all' I found was a stack that changes the colour of the text itself.

Now there is a stack that will do exactly what I was looking for. Psychedelic from Doobox. And now I'm at risk of adding Psychedelic colours to all of my sections!

Psychedelic can cycle through two to eight background colours. The colours can be as subtle, or as garish as you wish and the cycle time through all of the colours you choose can take as long as 100 seconds; i.e. the fewer colours you set, the more ethereal the colour change. The new colours subtly cycle into view first from the left and then from the right, so that if you do set all eight colours at the fastest speed, the name Psychedelic is appropriate – Think 'Lava Lamp'.

Psychedelic is advertised as 'Section Backgrounds', so whilst it is possible to reduce the section width by dropping Psychedelic into a container, the stack will ignore any settings for rounded corners.

Stack settings
Colour Count – 2 Colours, 4 Colours, 6 Colours, 8 Colours
Cycle Time – 10 Seconds–100Seconds
Preview Animation in Edit Mode

If you choose subtle colours and a long cycle time, you can keep your visitors guessing 'did the background colour just change, or not' with more intense colours and a shorter cycle time, you can easily draw attention to a text block, or to a call to action.
And I checked — if you want to go really crazy, you can combine Psychedelic with the text stack that I mentioned before, so that the text changes colour too.
Might be a bit much? That's entirely up to you.
I, for one, like Psychedelic when used cautiously.

Today is December 31, 2017. Well, it was when I wrote this, but for you, it will already be 2018. So what if you need to display today's current date on your RapidWeaver page and keep it updated? 2day from Marathia's Stacks can help you do that easily.

I could, of course, have installed a script on this page that would keep the date above current and demonstrate exactly how 2day works but, as I'm on a tight schedule, I decided against it — too much work!
It would, however, have cost me just a few seconds to add Jeroen's 2day to the top of the page and to display a message with the date, formatted exactly as I wanted. But I no longer want to permanently display today's date. Been there, done that, didn't like the t-shirt any more.

With 2day, you can format your date exactly as you want it to appear, with custom text both before and after today's date, so that your message says exactly what you want it to.

Stack settings
Text before Date – Enter a prefix of your choice, e.g. 'Today is '
Item #1 – Name of Day, Name of Month, Day of Month 1–31, Day of Month 01–31, Year 2 digits, Year 4 digits.
After Item #1 – Divider of your choice, e.g. comma. slash etc.
The same settings are available for items 2–4, but include the option 'Do not use'
Text after Date – Enter a suffix of your choice

Text Styling
Font Size
Font Colour
Alignment
Style – Bold, Italic, Underline
Font Family – Theme Default, Web Safe Font, Custom Font

The names for each of the months and days may be localised.

2day also has a sister stack – LastPublished. The RapidWeaver snippet '%last_published%' used to publish a simple date, e.g. 31/12/2017, but the snippet is no longer supported. At the same time, the snippet doesn't really say a lot.
LastPublished has the same settings as 2day, but will display the publishing date instead of the current date, so that you can supply your visitors with a more descriptive date in any format that you wish.

2day and LastPublished, two useful 'pay what you want' stacks for displaying dates.

Whilst we're on the subject of Marathia's Stacks; Jeroen also published two free page background stacks to round off 2017!
Shards generates a random, angular page background pattern with up to 3 colours, plus a fallback colour for older browsers, that resembles neon shards.
Nebula generates a random background pattern that resembles nebulas in space. Nebula supports 2 colours and a fallback colour.
At first, I wasn't too impressed by Shards, but saw potential with Nebula. With time, however, both stacks sort of grow on you…

I'm not in my office today. In fact, I'm not even in the country. Nevertheless, I just took a quick look at Tommy Hansen's iStack (DeFliGra, for those not familiar with the name) and while my design results are not terribly inspiring, iStack is.

iStack allows you to superimpose images, stacks and a caption over a background image. There are, of course, other stacks, or stack combinations that will allow you to do the same, but iStack drastically reduces the amount of work necessary for such a combination. All you need to do is drop your background image into iStack, add the second image and decide whether, or not you require an additional caption and stacks content. The standard stack settings make sure that you already have a perfect composition, but there's also room for creativity.

So, using one of the 62 (sixty-two) stickers that Tommy has thoughtfully provided as a design aid, let's take a closer look:
Drag iStack (I hope Apple won't contest the name) into a Stacks' page and in the stack settings, you'll find an image well for the main image and for the overlay (all images can be warehoused).

Once you've added an images into each of the image wells, you'll need to activate Show Front Image, otherwise iStack functions as a simple caption stack. You can now switch to preview and you'll find Tommy's sticker positioned in the middle of your image and a caption at the bottom right.

Returning to the Settings Panel, you'll also find options to deactivate the caption and to Add a DropZone. You can add any stacks of your choice to the drop zone.

Stack settings

The first options are Layer Images (active by default) and Switch Front/Back
Link And Hover – Add Link, Hover Opacity, Hover Hue, Scale (back img)
Back Image – Show Back Img (active by default) Image Resource, Fill Width, Greyscale
Front Image – (not activated by default), Image Resource, Width Settings, Margin Settings, Adjust Left/Right Margin, Opacity, Hue
Edit / Publish Crop (container) – Crop, Max Height, Adjust Margin
Caption – (activated by default), Note (caption container), Font Size, Line Height, Colour background/text, Shadow settings, Border, Position Settings
DropZone – (not active by default) When activated – settings for size, position and shadow.
Breakpoint – Settings to adjust size and position of Front and Back images, Caption size and position and the DropZone size and position below a breakpoint

As is usual for DeFliGra's stacks, advanced CSS settings are available for each of the containers.

iStack is ideal for superimposing two (or three) images and a caption, or two images and a text and is really simple to use.
Combining iStack with GoGrid (see Tommy's combined offer), a product page for multiple items with superimposed price or special offer is child's play.
The two examples above each have a background and front image, plus caption and stacks content.