JavaScript Workshop » Image Viewers: Lightbox JS 2.0

Lightbox JS is an unobtrusive script that is used to overlay images on a web page. This script uses the Prototype and Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries as well. By using functionality of these two libraries, the script produces some very nice animations in displaying your images.

To get started, all the necessary scripts are included in one download from their web site. I created a simple example to show you how it would look.

The main disadvantage of this script is that the other required libraries are a little large, so it may take a little while to initially load. You can checkout other JavaScript versions of Lightbox JS such as ThickBox, Slightly ThickerBox, Litebox, iBox and so forth.

Apart from using JavaScript to display images, you can use Adobe Flash as well. There are many free ones that use Flash such as a few from Airtight Interactive, such as AutoViewer, SimpleViewer, and PostCardViewer. All you have to do is update an .xml file with the image information (url, caption, styling, etc.).

You can buy the "Pro" versions of these which include the source (.fla) files so you can customize how it looks completely.