This is a major update for Gateway. If you are eligible for a free upgrade, you can download version 3 of Gateway from your Paddle account here. If you are updating from an older version, Gateway is available to buy on my website here.
Gateway was originally devised as a method to display popup alerts or messages on websites (complete with cookie tracking). It still excels at this task. However the premise of Gateway has shifted slightly in recent years, in that it also allows the setup of “off canvas” boxes and sidebars that can be toggled open and closed. Particularly useful for creating mobile / app-like websites. So Gateway is very much a stack with a lot of potential uses!
Changes in this version include:
- Dropped support for Internet Explorer and other older web browsers. Therefore resulting in a smaller, faster, leaner and more optimised codebase, which adds less weight to webpages.
- Removed some of the seldom-used features and settings, to make the stack easier for novice users to configure and to reduce support burdens.
- Secure tracking cookies are now supported, plus cookie paths and cookie domains. A perfect compliment to MiniCookie.
- New transitional effects, to subtlety show and hide Gateway stacks with elegant fading and sliding. These are carefully implemented to promote better accessability and reduce the risk triggering photosensitive epilepsy amoungst some website users.
- Improvements to compatibility, for when Gateway is used in themes and frameworks from other companies. Like Foundation 6, Foundry, Source, etc.
- A new and expanded choice of basic style settings, covering alignment, font styles, positioning and colours. All colour pickers support RGBa opacity.
- More options to choose the positioning of Gateway stacks on a webpage. For example, use the new left or right options to create beautiful slide-out sidebar panels, without needing any custom code.
- Additional flexibility towards creating your own close buttons or links. Any content placed inside a ‘Gateway Close Button’ sub-stack works to close Gateway.
- Overhauled the user interface. Cleaner, fresher, easier to find your way around. Regrouped and reorganised settings into a more convenient list. New tooltips on quite a few settings.
- Minor “under the hood” changes towards Gateway stacks previewing and publishing slightly quicker in newer versions of Stacks. Removed some deprecated Stacks API stuff.
- Tested and ready for jQuery 3.
Please see the product page for the updated documentation and a free trial version for download.
I have also published a sample RapidWeaver 8 project file to download, that demonstrates some of the things possible with Gateway. These examples are ready to copy and paste straight into your own website, if you prefer.
Until 1st January 2021, Gateway is also included in my 40% Black Friday promo. Details of that can be read here. Just pop your coupon code in the box if you want the discounted price, as shown here.