MaggsWeb Playground : lightbox

LightBox is a script by Lokesh Dhakar used to overlay images on the current page.

It seems to pop up - literally - everywhere lately, is surprisingly easy to implement and allows slideshows and images to be displayed professionally. It took me about 20 minutes to add th example below.

It does require 186k of javascript includes, but you may find that simillar js-related functionality uses some of the ame libraries aswell, so although the 186k will have to remain, it may save adding these again for other effects.

For download, discussion and details, click here.

Part 1 - Setup

Lightbox v2.0 uses the Prototype Framework and Scriptaculous Effects Library. You will need to include these three Javascript files in your header.

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/scriptaculous.js?load=effects,builder">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/lightbox.js"></script>

Include the Lightbox CSS file (or append your active stylesheet with the Lightbox styles).
```
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/lightbox.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
```
Check the CSS and make sure the referenced prevlabel.gif and nextlabel.gif files are in the right location. Also, make sure the loading.gif and closelabel.gif files as referenced near the top of the lightbox.js file are in the right location.

Part 2 - Activate

Add a rel="lightbox" attribute to any link tag to activate the lightbox. For example:
```
<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox" title="my caption">image #1</a>
```
Optional: Use the title attribute if you want to show a caption.

If you have a set of related images that you would like to group, follow step one but additionally include a group name between square brackets in the rel attribute. For example:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #1</a>
<a href="images/image-2.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #2</a>
<a href="images/image-3.jpg" rel="lightbox[roadtrip]">image #3</a>

image #1 image #2 image #3 image #3 image #3 image #3