I’ve just installed a neat image display tool called [Lightbox JS v2.0](http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/).
Lightbox is really easy to install – you just upload the scripts to your server and add a little bit of CSS to your site template’s header. Full instructions are included in the link above.
I really like the way Lightbox can group images into ‘sets’, so visitors can click through a gallery of images using Previous and Next arrows. You can see the set feature in action on [this post](http://pool-room.com/2004/01/photos-january-2004/). The script even pre-loads the next image in the set before you click on Next, giving much faster apparent speed for dialup visitors.
Displaying images on an overlay like this means I can now start posting larger images, since they no longer have to fit in with the navigation and other layout elements of my web site template. Displaying images on a dark background also gives them more ‘pop’, increasing the apparent contrast and colour saturation.
Let me know if you have any problems.
Comments
4 responses to “Lightbox JS v2.0 Image Galleries”
hi, thanks for your view on this plugin. I’ve been thinking about adding it for days. So — sounds like I don’t really even need to add some underlying gallery to make lightbox work! That would be good, as I’m not too happy with the available galleries, and just want to add images as you describe and demo on your post.
I’m gonna try this script when I get home.
Sounds like you’re having the same problem I had – I just wanted a simple gallery that made it easy to display some photos. I couldn’t find anything suitable – everything was either overly complex or dumbed-down and cheesy.
I’m very happy with how Lightbox JS is working.
does anyone know how to add navigation to the light box ?
would be real helpful
What kind of navigation do you mean? You can click on the left or right side of the photo to go forward/back through a set of images.
For anything more complex, I think you need to look at other, more complete, photo gallery solutions. The appeal of Lightbox is that it is lightweight and simple.