Looking for script like Lightbox capable of external link from 'lightboxed image'

[MorganMD]

Greetings,

I'm a newbie looking for help in choosing a script with lightbox capabilities AND ability to link from 'lightboxed' image to my blog. I am currently experimenting with Lightbox v2.5 from

http://lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/

but i'm not able to get a link working (which may well be because i don't know what i'm doing); hence my plea. I do not have a working website but am testing locally. Lightbox v2.5 seems to be doing its job - but my links are unsuccessful.

Thank you for your consideration.

[jscheuer1]

Even those Lightbox like scripts that make it relatively easy to link to content in the lightbox generally use the caption, not the image for that purpose.

That's because Lightbox and its many clones use/reserve the area over the image for next/previous links for those cases where the lightbox image is a part of a group of images. (Grouping images in a lightbox gallery is one of the more or less standard capabilities of virtually all the lightbox type scripts.)

Would a link in the caption be acceptable to you?

Other things to consider in your choice of a lightbox type script are the overhead and performance of the script, the ease/utility of using the caption as a link and/or as HTML containing a link, and whether or not you want the lightbox script to do other things - like present pages and/or videos instead of only images and/or present an automated slideshow of lightboxed images.

What are your thoughts on those options?

If you just want an efficient Lightbox like script that shows images, can do groups and can be fairly easily modified to include HTML in the caption in a sensible fashion, I would recommend Slimbox2 with my live load invocation as presented here:

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/blog.php?b=247

If you're willing to forgo the group capability in that script or adapt its next/previous buttons to a different place in its lightbox, it can be adapted to link the image itself. But doing so would probably be a bit of work.

If you want other capabilities, there are a host of Lightbox like scripts available. One or more of them can probably fit your criteria, although they might need configuration/modification to do so exactly.

There may even be one that has the option of directly linking the image. I'm just not aware of any, at least not that spring to mind at the moment. There probably is at least one that wouldn't require too much configuration/modification to do that.

[MorganMD]

Hi John, and thank you so much for the reply.

Linking via the caption would be perfectly satisfactory. If there is a way for Lightbox v2.5 to do that i would be delighted. However, if it makes more sense to change over to Slimbox2, i could certainly it a go.

I don't require the lightbox script to present pages or vids - i am mainly interested in images. I suppose automated slideshows are of some interest but not the driving force in my quest. I mainly want to present images in a larger 'lightbox' and have a way for the viewer to link to my blog if more info on the image is desired.

cheers. -Mark

[jscheuer1]

Slimbox2 with the modification as outlined in the blog entry I linked you to is the way to go. It allows you to put your own custom init on the script, which Is what is shown in the code block on that page. With it you can make lightbox links like so:

<a href="someimage.jpg" rel="lightbox"
 rev="This is a caption with a <a href='http://www.yourblog.com/someinfo.htm'>Link</a> in it."
>Text or image tag trigger</a>

The script itself, while looking and otherwise acting the same as Lightbox, is more efficient than Lightbox. You can do that with the official Lightbox, but you would have to use the title attribute instead of rev. That means that when you hover over the trigger with the mouse you would see the HTML code.

Since Lightbox doesn't allow for custom inits, its code would have to be hacked to permit the use of the rev attribute in this manner.

[MorganMD]

Thank you John,

I will give Slimbox2 a try and let you know how i do.

I do have a point of confusion for me however; (keeping in mind that i am not well versed with HTML) - my confusion: i thought it was illegal to have nested "a" anchors but in the example above that looks like what i have. what am i missing?

-Mark