Here at Ninja News, we don't write about updated add-ons. If we did, this space would be overpopulated and the monthly newsletter would be fifteen pages long.
But for every rule there's an exception. When a plugin is completely rewritten and prances around with swelled chest, proclaiming 'I'm New', we have to sit up and take notice.

And JW's updated Target is new. Having been rewritten from the ground up, it's much simpler to use, it's easier to understand and it offers completely new options.

The old Target stack was sometimes a little difficult to use. The options weren't always 100% understandable and you could sometimes play around for… well, let's say longer than necessary to get your positioning just right. With Target's new options, experimentation is a thing of the past, your main concerns are now limited to Margins and Padding!

As before, Target offers options to pin its content to the top, or to the bottom of the page, or relative to its parent stack etc, but it now comes with an additional container for Background content. The advantage? Well, for example, there are a couple of third party menu stacks that are unable to have a logo positioned within them.
Drop the menu stack into a Target background container, however, and logos become child's play.
But that's just one option. Using the background stack, you get five default options for the positioning, plus an option to customise your position and as before, you can also rotate your content.

If you already purchased Target, no matter if it was last week or at some point in 2012, the update is completely free. If you didn't purchase Target yet, you might want to give it some serious consideration…

ToolTips – those boring-looking grey boxes that appear under a text link when it has a description text. Well, they no longer need to look boring, they can now be any colour you wish and the can even contain text, images and links! Jeroen of Marathia's Stacks has just released a two stack set which will allow you to customise your ToolTips to look just as you want them.

TippyTitle will turn any title tags into styled tooltips. Red, green, blue; above, or below your tagged text; with, or without a pointer and just about any size that you want. You even get a choice of fifteen different cursors and the tooltip can appear either on hover, or when the linked item is clicked.

TippyPlus allows you to have an info panel open when your linked item is hovered or clicked. The Info Panel can contain just about anything you wish and, depending on the size of your content, can even cover the screen.

And that's not all. The two stacks can be combined and configured so that on hover, you see the tooltip and on click, your info panel will open.

So how does it all work?
Well, TippyTitle is extremely simple to set up. Select the word that you wish to add a tooltip to, click the Add Link button and, in the URL panel – next to Text – add your tooltip text.
You can now take a look at the stack setup panel and configure your tooltip to look exactly as you want it.

TippyPlus is very slightly more complicated to set up. By default it is configured to open your info panel when the stack content is hovered – which is great if you want to add a tooltip to a button, an image or a text snippet – in which case the stack displays two containers – one for your linked content and one for your info stacks.
If you wish to have TippyPlus to open when a word is hovered, don't drop your text stack into the Tippy Plus stack, bet set the stack to 'custom selector'. You'll then need to select the word in question, open the URL panel, add Javascript:void(0) to the URL and then add a unique ID for the active text.. If you also add a description in the Title panel and drop the text stack into a TippyTitle stack the description will be displayed.

As simple as the stacks are, there is a whole online manual describing the various setup possibilities. The manual is well worth taking a look at as the Tippy stacks are a lot more versatile than the stack settings would lead you to believe.


The first image above shows TippyTitle in action. The second image displays a TippyPlus info panel when the same link is clicked.

Stack Settings
TippyTitle
Tooltip for: – Every element with a title tag within this stack, This stack, An element with a custom selector on this page
Keep elements on one line – deactivated by default
Show – On hover, On click
Tooltip size – Small, Regular, Big
Align text – Left, Centre, Right, Justified
Cursor style – 15 options
Flip – Display tooltip on the opposite side when no room is available to display
Distance – px
Offset – x, y axes
Animation – 5 options
Delay – Show, Hide, ms
Duration – Show, Hide, ms
Inertia – Modifies the transition
Show Arrow – Deactivated by default
Width – Tooltip Width – % or px
Custom Settings – Deactivated by default – Black tooltip, White text
When Custom Settings is activated the tooltip may be customised
Custom font size – deactivated by default
Bold, Italic
Font Family – Theme, Web Safe, Custom
Custom text colour
Use text shadow

The TippyPlus setup panel is almost identical, but includes custom colours for Text, Link, Link underline.

TippyTitle is ideal if you need to add explanatory text to words, links, or even a complete panel of content.
TippyPlus takes tooltips to a whole new level!

Also just in time for the BlackFriday promotions, Weavium has released three new stacks. Two of the stacks are free and I shall be reviewing them later. Slidetastic is a new take on an image carousel.

So once more the question – do we we need yet another image slider for RapidWeaver. Well, just last week, I answered my own question by requesting that a developer add new functions to an already existing stack. Slidetastic almost does what I requested.
Slidetastic is a simple image carousel and (as yet?) doesn't have a lightbox function. Nevertheless, Slidetastic is an interesting stack that many Weavers will appreciate. Easy to use and very flexible, Slidetastic arrives with three separate stacks: The base stack, a Slide child stack and a Slidetastic Image stack.

So how exactly is Slidetastic different to other image sliders?
First off: Slidetastic can display a single image or a row of images. When using an odd number of images within a row of images, the centred image may be focussed whilst the images left and right of it display with reduced opacity.
Second: The Slidetastic Image Stack has containers for a caption Header and a full sized caption text. Both may individually be displayed constantly, or can appear when the image is hovered.
Third: I guarantee that you've seldom seen a slider stack where the navigation is so highly configurable as Slidetastic with over a dozen options!
Fourth: Slidetastic can display just about any stack you please in addition to the standard Slidetastic Image stack. Even in combination with the Image stack!
Obviously, Slidetastic has autoplay, loop and pause on hover settings. The loop is actually a "scroll-back-to-beginning" setting, but that's splitting hairs.
It is interesting to note that the number of slides displayed simultaneously may be set individually for Desktop, Tablet and Mobile, as can the number of slides to scroll and the distance between the slides in each case.

The navigation buttons? Yes – as already mentioned: flexible. Above, Below, Left, Right, Full height, Within, Without, Stacked…
… the options go on and on. With the Navigation dots, you'll need to be a little flexible and think inside the box. They are placed within the slide by default and if you'd prefer them to be outside, you'll need to add padding.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, the Black Friday promotion ends soon…

In June of this year, I reviewed HotSpots Pro from S4S. A few days ago Will re-released an updated version of the one-time Tsooj Media stack ImageMapper – also as a Stacks4Stacks product. Hot Spots; Image Maps — potentially the same thing, so does it make sense to have two stacks that, essentially, do the same thing housed within the same stables?

Let's do a quick recap. Hotspots allows you to overlay image areas with live rectangles, or with Fontawesome icons. The rectangles and icons can each be linked to a URL, for instance, or a lightbox.

ImageMapper allows you to overlay an image with rectangles, triangles, hexagons and circles, but more importantly – with a mapped area…

So how do you add something as 'simple' as a circular overlay? You need three coordinates: 1 – the position from the left of the image; 2 – the position from the top; 3 – the radius of the circle – all coordinates are separated by a comma. My tip: In the ImageMapper Area child, choose your shape – Circle, or Rectangle and then adjust the size and position whilst in preview.
For more complicated shapes, such as a triangle, or an octagon, load an image of the shape to begin with; map the shape out with the crosshairs and then copy the coordinates into your final image The base stack provides a square, a triangle, a circle and a hexagon to get you started. The hexagon is already mapped out.

Stack settings

ImageMapper
Data Source – Set up your Image maps using either the child stacks, or an HTML image map
Image Source – Dragged and Dropped, or Warehoused
Show Coordinate Inspector – See above
Area Mousover Colouring – Fill Colour, Stroke Colour
Fill Opacity
Stroke Opacity
Stroke Width
Fade Speed

ImageMapper Area
Area Title – Title for the tooltip
Area Link
Area Coordinates
Custom Area Attributes – add a class to the overlay

So does it make sense to have two similar stacks in the same stables?
Absolutely! ImageMapper is ideal for those more complicated image maps.

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.