Sky Addons  ·  Elementor Widget
INTRODUCING

Advanced Skill Bars

Animated skill bars for Elementor that fill as they enter view — for showing expertise, ratings or progress at a glance.

Studio operations

Where the studio hours actually went

Twelve months of timesheets, sorted into the four things we actually sell. It opens every new-client call, because it answers what are you good at faster than a case study does.

Brand and identity

32%

Websites and product design

28%

Motion and film

22%

Content and copy

18%

Share of billable hours across the last twelve months. Every hour is counted once, so the four figures add up to 100%.

Members’ ballot

How 612 members voted on the £40,000 surplus

The ballot closed at midday on 6 May. One vote each, single preference, counted the same afternoon with two observers in the room.

Single preference · one vote per member
Counted 6 May

Rebuild the north wall — 214 votes

35%

Two more instructor posts — 168 votes

27%

Longer opening hours — 121 votes

20%

Cheaper day passes — 68 votes

11%

Hold it in reserve — 41 votes

7%

The north wall carried it on the first count, so no second preferences were needed. Work goes out to tender in June and the full minutes are on the members’ board by the door.

612
votes cast
71%
of 862 members
4 hrs
from close to result
Next ballot: the lease renewal, October
Freelance profile

The two panels every translator gets asked for

A rate card gets skimmed. These two blocks get read, because an agency booker is looking for one language and one tool and wants to know in three seconds whether to keep scrolling.

Languages

Portuguese — mother tongue

100

English — C2

95

Spanish — C1

78

French — B2

62

Japanese — A2

28

Self-assessed against the Common European Framework. The number is a self-rating out of 100, not a test score, and the band beside each language is what it maps to.

Working tools

Translation memory and glossaries

92

Subtitling and timecode

74

Desktop publishing handover

58

Audio transcription

46

Machine-translation post-editing

35

Day-to-day confidence on the same self-rated scale. These are five separate answers, so they are not a share of anything and do not add up.

Storage

Three sites, one archive, and what is left on each

The figure beside each site is the amount actually in use. The bar measures it against the disk it sits on, which is why the smallest number here is the one causing trouble.

Capacity report
Checked 04:15, nightly

Bristol — main array

41.2 TB

Leeds — nightly mirror

38.9 TB

Cold store, offsite

112 TB

Edit suite scratch disk

7.5 TB

The scratch disk empties itself on Sunday night. If it fills before then the render queue stops, which is why it is the only meter on this page with an alarm attached to it.

Loading the Thursday run at Thwaite, 6.40am
This week’s box

Where the veg in Thursday’s box was grown

Five growers, none of them more than half an hour out. The split moves every week with whatever is ready, so this panel gets rewritten on Monday morning before the orders close.

Share of the box by weight

Ryeburn Farm, 11 miles — roots and brassicas

34%

Thwaite Market Garden, 6 miles — salad and herbs

26%

Ellersby Orchard, 19 miles — apples and pears

18%

Hollin Bank, 24 miles — potatoes and onions

14%

Our own polytunnels — tomatoes and chillies

8%

Packed on Wednesday night and dropped at nine collection points before eight on Thursday. Anything grown further than thirty miles is named on the label; there is nothing on it this week.

Orders close Monday, 9pm
Programme board

Shopfront fit-out — week 9 of 14

The board the site manager screenshots every Friday afternoon. Five stages, five honest percentages, one page a client can read without picking up the phone.

Joinery bench, Tuesday. Two of the five stages below happen in this room.

Stage completion

Survey and drawings

100%

Joinery manufacture

88%

Electrical first fix

72%

Flooring

45%

Signage and vinyl

10%

Each figure is that stage’s own completion, not its share of the job — they are not meant to add up.

Open roles

What a week in each of these three jobs actually looks like

Every advert says the work is varied. These are the real splits off last quarter’s job sheets, so nobody turns up on the first morning expecting a different job.

Bench joiner

£34,000–£38,000 · full time · workshop

Bench work

62%

Site fitting

22%

Setting out and drawings

16%

Two benches free. You would be making stair parts and shop fronts, mostly in oak and accoya.

Site fitter

£36,000–£41,000 · full time · van provided

On site

70%

Workshop prep

18%

Surveys and snagging

12%

Four days a week within an hour of the yard. Nights away are rare and always agreed a month ahead.

Workshop apprentice

£18,500 · three-year apprenticeship · day release

Supervised bench work

55%

Machine shop

25%

College day

20%

No experience needed. One place, starting September, with the college day paid and the tools provided.

Applications close 30 September · every one gets an answer
Account settings

What is left in the plan this month

Four meters on the billing screen. Each label carries the raw figure so nobody has to work backwards from a percentage, and the one about to run out is the only one that changes colour.

Team plan

Renews 12 September

Storage — 164 GB of 250 GB

66%

Seats in use — 38 of 50

76%

API calls this month — 1.2M of 3M

40%

Automation runs — 9400 of 10000

94%

Automation runs are the meter worth watching this month. Overages are billed at the end of the cycle, so the raspberry bar is the one to act on before the 12th.

Your course

You are four modules into Joinery Level 2

Progress here counts assessments that have been signed off, not videos watched. Two are marked, one is sitting with your tutor, and the last two have not been opened yet.

Joinery Level 2 · evening cohort
Ends 14 June

Module 1 — Hand tools and sharpening

100%

Module 2 — Timber technology

100%

Module 3 — Mortice and tenon

72%

Module 4 — Curved and shaped work

35%

Module 5 — Site fixings and ironmongery

0%

Module 6 — Final assessment piece

0%

Your tutor left a note on the mortice assessment: the shoulders are tight, so bring the practice piece on Thursday and we will pare them back together.

Workshop open Tuesday and Thursday, 6–9pm
Bench four · the Level 2 evening group
Winter appeal

Eight weeks left on the appeal. The top bar is the total raised. The three under it are where every pound is committed the moment it lands — published because donors ask, every single year.

Raised so far

Appeal total

80%
Where each pound goes

Direct grants to households

55%

Outreach and casework

30%

Running the appeal

15%

Allocation adds up to 100%. Totals are updated every Monday morning.

The longtail at the halfway point, loaded to 40 kg
Group test

Four cargo bikes, six weeks, one very tired reviewer

Every bike carried the same 40 kg over the same eleven-mile route, twice a week, in whatever weather turned up. Scores are out of ten and weighted towards how each one behaves loaded, because that is when a cargo bike gets difficult.

Overall score, loaded and unloaded combined

Longtail, mid-drive, eight speed

8.6/10

Front loader, belt drive

8.1/10

Low-deck trike

7.4/10

Compact longtail, hub motor

6.9/10

The front loader is the better shopping bike and by far the easier one to park. The longtail is the one we would buy, because it is the only bike here that stays calm with a child seat and a full crate on the same trip.

Six weeks · 528 miles · no bikes were lent to us
Reader survey

What 1,214 readers told us in March

Two questions from the annual survey. The first allowed one answer, the second allowed any number — and that difference is why one block adds to 100 and the other does not. Saying so is the whole job of the small print under each block.

Which format do you reach for first?

The weekly newsletter

41%

The podcast

27%

Short video

19%

The printed quarterly

13%

One answer each. The four figures add up to 100%.

What would make you subscribe?

Fewer ads

68%

Deeper reporting

54%

A lower monthly price

47%

Offline reading

31%

Readers could pick any that applied. These four do not add up to 100% and are not meant to.

Availability

Two project slots left before Christmas

We run three projects at a time, so nobody sits waiting for a designer who is already on something else. This is the studio diary as it stands this morning.

Studio diary · updated this morning

October — one project slot open

65% booked

November — one project slot open

72% booked

December — fully booked

100% booked

January — planning opens 1 October

20% booked

A project starts with a two-hour session in the studio or on a call, and nothing is invoiced before that. If the month you want is full we will say so rather than squeeze you in.

FAQ
Frequently asked

Advanced Skill Bars

Straight answers about what this one does, where it fits in a real build, and what it costs you to ship.

Still stuck?

Read the documentation for this one, or write to us — a human answers inside a business day.

When do the skill bars start filling as you scroll?

When they reach the viewport, and you decide how far. The Advanced Skill Bars widget in Sky Addons for Elementor has a Trigger Threshold control set to 80% by default — lower it and the bars start filling as soon as a sliver appears, which suits bars near the foot of a long page.

Can I show a rating out of 5 or 10 instead of a percentage?

Yes, using the pair of sliders on each row. Skill Max Value sets the scale and Skill Value the reading, so a max of 10 with a value of 8 fills the bar 80% while printing 8. Clear or change the Value Suffix, which is a percent sign by default in Sky Addons.

Where can the skill name and the number sit on the bar?

Almost anywhere. The Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars widget positions the name above, inside or below the track, and the value above, inside, below, or as a bubble riding over the end of the fill — that last one takes its own rotation, background and border so it can sit at an angle.

Do skill bars in Elementor need Elementor Pro or a paid add-on?

Neither. Advanced Skill Bars ships in the free Sky Addons for Elementor plugin and runs on free Elementor, so the animation, the striped and rainbow fills and the per-bar colouring cost nothing. Elementor Pro is a separate product and plays no part in it.

Can each bar have its own colour instead of one shared palette?

Yes. Flip the Customize switch on any row of the Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars and that bar gets its own track colour, its own fill — solid, gradient or image — and its own name and value colours, while every other row keeps following the shared style below.

Can the progress bars be striped?

Yes, with two switches that work together. Striped lays diagonal bands across the fill of the Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars, and Animated sets those bands travelling along the bar so it reads as active rather than finished. Both work on top of whatever fill colour or gradient you have chosen.

What is the rainbow animation on the skill bars?

A fill that cycles through a list of colours instead of holding one. Switch on Rainbow Animation in the Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars, set a speed in seconds, and give it a comma-separated colour list — seven colours are supplied by default and you can replace them with your own brand set.

Are there different skill bar layouts to choose from?

Two. Default stacks the label, track and value in the usual way; Vision unlocks a Display Direction control that arranges those three parts inline, in a column, or in either reversed order. Both come from the same Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars widget, so switching is one dropdown.

Can I put an icon beside each skill?

Yes. Turn on Show Skill Icon in the Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars and every row gains its own icon picker, accepting any Elementor icon or an uploaded SVG. Size, colour and spacing from the label are set once for the whole list, so a row of tool logos stays even.

Can I use skill bars for something other than skills?

Yes — anything expressed as a proportion. The Sky Addons Advanced Skill Bars widget suits project completion, storage used against a quota, funding raised against a target, poll results or nutrition breakdowns. Only the label and the suffix change; the bar does not care what the number means.

Can a skill bar show a half point, like 4.5 out of 5?

Not as printed text — both sliders move in whole numbers and the figure counts up in whole numbers too. The practical answer in Sky Addons is to scale the pair: 9 with a max of 10 fills exactly the same 90% and prints a number the reader can trust.

Are skill bars readable by a screen reader?

Partly, and it is fair to say so. The skill name and its value are real text in the page, so both are announced and indexed by search engines. The track itself is a styled element rather than a native progress control, and the optional icon is hidden from assistive technology as decoration.