I’ve been developing various things over the web for a while now and every so often, I came across really nice, neat software that are not only great to use, it’s free! So, I’m going to write a small reviews (this isn’t going to turn into a review site) on them and hopefully, someone else who comes across it also gets to have their moments of joy finding them out. First article to be written in the reviews section! Well, currently just a blog.
It’s about Lightbox. It’s pretty famous, I don’t think it needs more publicity from some random site, but it really is one of the greatest programs a web developer should have in their tool belt. If you don’t want to read about it from me, you can also search it on google and you’ll find (as of now) 27million articles about it. I’d say that’s pretty popular. Lightbox is a javascript based prog that will display images from thumbnails on top of page. Not in it, not on another page, on top.
This makes things really convenient whenever you don’t want people changing pages to view the full size of your image. Afterall, it’s pain to repeatedly click back and such. It also comes with very nice features of next, prev, and all that with key mappings on your keyboard! Sounds like it has everything you’d ever want. Now, only if it was easy to implement….. Wait, it is easy to implement! It’s only matter of including a few files to be loaded and a single liner to make a <a> link into a lightbox link! There are also tons of modded version of lightbox out there that will suit to your specific needs.
I’m not done yet, here’s the best part. It’s license. I don’t usually bring licenses up as the best part of any program, but everything I find myself working for someone, Sure, I can program things myself. Afterall, that’s why they hired me in the first place. But why waste hours (possibly months or even years) of my time coding something someone else has already done? I can’t use any softwares that have licensese that are “free” yet, it’s only for personal use. Common…. Who actually needs them for personal use anyways? What difference does it make whether they use it commercially or personally if they aren’t even going to sell it? Well, Lightbox can be used by anyone and for any purpose. In fact, the chances are, you’ve been to some commercial website that actually uses lightbox in their website.
If you want to know more about it. visit their official website: http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/
You can also read more about it on wikipedia! With additional links too. Here it is for your convenience.
That’s all for now!