Today I spiced up the Stencil Street Art site with a nice little JavaScript effect. It allows you to view larger versions of 30 images displayed without leaving the site and without any reload. It's pretty slick.

I did not write this script but instead used a clone of the original invented by Lokesh Dhakar called Lightbox. The Lightbox effect got pretty popular since it was released and today probably a dozen clones exist.

Here follows a list of scripts I found while searching for the one fitting my needs for the Stencil Street Art site.

Lightbox JS

The original code nothing fancy but small and self contained.

• Images only
• No image sets
• No effects

Lightbox JS v2.0

A complete rewrite by the same author as Lightbox v1 using the script.aculo.us and prototype libraries.

• Images only
• Image sets
• “fancy pants” transition effects

Lightbox+

Implements some of Lightbox v2's feature atop of the original Lightbox script without adding a library dependency. Downsizes too large images to the available screen space and adds an optional “effect image”.

• Images only
• Image sets
• no effects

GreyBox

Adds iframe support to the Lightbox idea.

• Images only
• Image sets
• Fading effects

Thickbox

A simple implementation using JQuery supporting iframe and AJAX atop of images.

• Images, iframe, AJAX
• Image sets
• No effects

Greybox Redux

A reimplentation of GreyBox using the JQuery library. The examples only show the iframe support, so I'm not sure if images and sets are really supported.

• Images?, iframe
• Image sets?
• No effects?

Slimbox

A lightweight clone of the Lightbox v2 script using the mootools framework.

• Images only
• Image sets
• “fancy pants” transition effects

ModalBox

An implentation to use the lightbox effect for modal dialogs. Build on prototype and script.aculo.us.

• AJAX only
• No image sets
• “fancy pants” transition effects

ClearBox

Another Lightbox v2 clone, adding a slide show auto timer. The homepage is in Hungarian only.

• Images only
• Image sets
• Zoom transition effects

Suckerfish HoverLightbox Redux

This library combines the Lightbox image set feature with the well known “Suckerfish” menus to create full fledged image galleries.

• Images only
• Image sets
• “fancy pants” transition effects

You see there is a lot of choice and there are probably a lot more scripts I didn't see today. Which script you should use depends on which JavaScript library you might use already, if you need to display non-image content and if you need any effects. For the street art sit I choose Slimbox and modified it to my needs. In DokuWiki's gallery plugin a modified version of Lightbox+ is included.

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