Image trail
Pictures appear one after another along the pointer's path, around the words and never over them and fade behind it, over a heading. Until someone moves, and on a phone, a slow figure of eight draws the trail by itself; a finger dragged across draws its own. Needs the EtchPress Runtime; without it the pictures sit in a quiet row.
Live preview
Selected work
Eight gardens, one summer.
Move across to look through them.
Before you copy
This is a showpiece. It pastes into Etch like any other item and it is complete without anything else, but its motion comes from the EtchPress runtime: a small script that loads only on the pages that use a showpiece.
Etch for WordPress: download the EtchPress Runtime plugin from Downloads in your account, install it and activate it. Paste your licence key under Settings, EtchPress Runtime, and it updates from the Plugins screen like any other plugin.
Etch Studio: download the EtchPress runtime files from Downloads in your account, unzip them and drop them into your project's Asset Manager, then paste the item. Studio ships the files it needs with your site.
What you can build with it
A photographer's or a studio's hero. The opening of a lookbook or a collection. A playful band on an about page. A gallery teaser above the real gallery.
Props
eyebrow (text, optional); title (text); lead (text, optional); images (repeater: image, alt)
States shown
Idle: the trail draws itself. Pointer moving: a picture drops every few centimetres of travel, grows in and fades. Touch: the same under a dragged finger, the self-drawn trail otherwise. Reduced motion and no runtime: the heading over a row of small pictures.
How to change it
Content and options are 4 props in the component's settings panel. Colour, type, spacing and radius follow your Automatic.css settings, so a change to the site's palette or scale changes this too. For anything else, edit the classes in the Style Manager, starting with .trail. Its behaviour is a small script that travels with the component; no plugin and nothing to install.
ACSS tokens used
space-s, space-m, space-xl, radius, text-s, text-l, primary-dark, text-dark-muted.
ACSS requirements
ACSS 4 defaults. Needs the EtchPress Runtime, 0.5.0 or later: the EtchPress Runtime plugin on WordPress, or the runtime's files dropped into the project's Asset Manager in Etch Studio. Without it you get the still version.
Version history
Version 1.1.0, October 10, 2026: The pictures keep clear of the words: they land around the eyebrow, title and lead and never on them, and the trail circles the words until someone moves. Smaller pictures on a phone, so there is room around the text. Needs EtchPress Runtime 0.8.0; with 0.7.0 the pictures can still pass over the words. Version 1.0.1, October 2, 2026: The heading stays readable over the pictures: its own colour, with an outline of the ground's colour. Sizes now follow the width of the place it sits in, not the screen, so it fits a narrow column on a wide screen. Version 1.0.0, October 1, 2026: First release, with the EtchPress Runtime 0.5.0.
Tested with
Etch 1.6.7 and ACSS 4.0.1. Version 1.1.0.
Needs the EtchPress runtime
The plugin on WordPress, or the runtime's files in Etch Studio. Without it you get the still version.
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