Smallest jQuery lightbox script - javascript

What's the smallest lightbox plugin for jQuery (in terms of size)? Something close to Fancybox, but smaller :)

I wrote a low-level jQuery lightbox script called Nitelite: https://github.com/premasagar/nitelite (it's 1.4KB when minified and gzipped)
It is the kind of thing that can be either used on its own, or to build more feature-rich lightbox plugins.
It's been used in production on a couple of projects:
the BBC World Service widget (click a news article): http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/services/2009/05/090512_pm_widget_conditions.shtml
the MiShorts widget (click a film thumbnail): http://www.mishorts.com/widget
It's open source, MIT license. Enjoy ;)

I have used this sometime ...
http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox2
It's only 4K .

As Yi Jiang already stated, the "smallest" depends completely on your specific needs, if you want everything that Fancybox does, I hardly doubt that there's a way around using that very plugin.
Still you could take a look at others and see whether they fit your needs, you should check out this list of lightbox scripts, many of which are smaller in size than Fancybox, but you'll still have to evaluate them and see if they fit your needs.
And last but not least you can always write your own one by reading a tutorial. That is, if you want to write your own one. But then again, if you have such specific needs you should know that nobody will come along and write some code for you for free.

My approach to these sort of problems is to find a script that meets my requirements then hack it mercilessly until it only contains what I need. Once that's achieved, I'll minify the script (leaving the compression of the script up to my server).
While we're on the subject, if you are looking for small scripts mainly to reduce the browser fetch time, then also ensure that your web server cache control headers and compression settings are set to good values. A nice writeup (regarding caching) can be found here. If you don't have a good caching policy defined, then it won't matter much whether the script is small if it is being downloaded from the server on every page view.

I would shy away from the PrettyPhoto plugin, which appears convenient. There is an advertisement on their demo which is suspicious (my site was redirected shortly after experimenting with it)
If you are looking for a lightbox, try to find one that has been updated to the latest query. Slimbox2 and fancy box have not been updated for modern css, using images to build the box, and neither have been updated for streamlining changes in the latest jquery.

Related

All scripts AND libraries in ONE js script?

Ok so I am in the process of building my first Javascript 'framework' or 'bootstrap' which will be implemented in combination with a single pre-processed CSS file. I am gathering my favorite content slider, smooth scroller, content slideshow, parallax elements & bg-img, sticky elements, among a few more cutting edge navigational & UI based scripts (cross-browser/platform/device/viewport compatibility and performance). My problem is when constructing my demo page with all combined elements in place loaded and active on the page... well many seeem to require a different version of Jquery to be called in order to function properly. I have managed to get them to work properly while testing by carefully reordering the jquery librarys as they are called in the of the page. Now here is my (2) part question:
How do I get all my JQuery to work properly without loading multiple versions of it (one for each script almost)
I have a sample in my portfolio which I would love to use as the example. http://www.nicholasabrams.com/ (non mobile device version). In the src for that URL you will see only (1) js and (1) css - including the jquery libraries which are ALSO included in the single .js in the begining of the file. Please don't flame me, as I am asking for help. The link above works fine now (with apple as a slight exception)... but I am just trying to eliminate any bad practices I have as I have just started as a web developer at my first large company. Thanks!!
PS: Would post a snippet but its quite a large js file as you would imagine but if you will, please inspect my src and let me know what you think because my sites first load decreased from 22 seconds to 4-7 seconds after doing the above I wish I could just include the latest version of JQuery!)
if I understand you correctly you are loading more than one jQuery library to the page (in different order)? That's a mistake - you shouldn't do that.
What you should do is make sure that the plugins you work with are compatible with the library you are working with. If they're not - wither find other plugins or fix the ones you have to support the jQuery language you are using.
You have a 2 megabyte hi-res background image, that is insane! I would scrap that and the swirl image, while it may look cool to you, it is distracting and may actually make people want to avoid your website. It makes it difficult to concentrate on the text in the middle of your screen. You don't want people to remember the swirling image, but rather your portfolio, right?
You also have 404's on the following:
http://www.nicholasabrams.com/ScrollSpy_files/result-light.css
http://www.nicholasabrams.com/example-images/testing_station.png
404's are bad for several reasons, they are a wasted resource as they slow the loading of your page, because it attempts to find something and does not find it, and, finally, they have a negative impact on your SEO, specifically Google PageRank docks you for any 404's.
Find a way to work with one version of jQuery, it will eventually bite you to have multiple versions of the library and it is a bandwidth killer to have your users load up a bunch of libraries, even if they are CDN'd.

Custom jQuery UI

I wanted to use some functionality in jQuery-UI. So, I downloaded a custom version of the same from jQuery website, including only those things in my download that were needed by me. This was supposed to trim down the total size of my page, but to my surprise, the page size remained almost the same even after following the procedure provided at jQuery website.
Did I do something wrong? Or is this the expected behaviour?
You should have a look at JQuery UI Packager, it lets you pick what functionality you want.
It bundles it up with both a custom and a minified JQuery.
When I tried it, I removed everything but core functionality, and it ended up 15kb uncompressed.
Then I tried it without removing anything, it ended up 206kb uncompressed.
If you're that concerned you should think about gzipping.
Look at this chart of filesizes and how they improve with the different methods.
Here's a post about a guy asking a similar question, and the answer explains what you should focus on.
Here's a discussion about gzip and minify.

Simple lightbox feedback form? Included screenshot

There are so many lightboxes to choose from, I'm looking for a very lightweight one to use in an embedded javascript widget that would be a single domain name. I saw the perfect one on chainreactioncycles.com, it popped up out of nowhere so I took a screenshot:
I tried looking for info on it on the page source, but couldn't find anything that would let me trace where it came from... Would anybody know of one like this? Or exactly that one?
If not exactly like above, anything similar would be great too, keeping the following in mind:
Very small javascript download (animation not needed)
Self contained, not dependent on any libraries other than jquery (since I'm already using that anyway).
Works in major browsers
Close button (like GetSatisfaction or UserVoice)
Dims background
Avoids javascript namespace conflicts (or can easily be made to avoid them)
CSS styling of lightbox does not interfere with site styling
Have you used an existing lightbox scripts for this same purpose with similar requirements? Did you roll your own? Insights welcome!
What you are looking for is called a modal box.
Here is a list of them
... and here is a striking replica of what you are looking for
Check out Zoombox.. It sounds like what you're looking for... Simple to use... Allows custom content.. jQuery Module... From past experience it covers what you have outlined as requirements etc
http://www.grafikart.fr/zoombox will tell you all you need to know.

Javascript widget implementation

I have a question about Javascript widgets. The widget I am working on simply embeds content on a page instead of using iframes. So far it looks good. But there are cases where some users layouts are messing up the widget. For example, the widget might require a width of 300px to appear. But the parent div is set to 250px and hence the right part of the widget is cut off.
I was wondering what sort of precautions should be taken to prevent this? I was talking to the product manager who mentioned he wanted me to check the parent div elements and get the size and then show an alternate message if their size is not accurate. But again, since this is Javascript and the widget is supported in many diff browsers(including IE6), I am wondering how fail-safe this method would be? What if I need to iterate the DOM all the way up before getting a valid size? I am also worried about performance here. This extra checks would slow down the delivery of my widget content to "good users" since I am adding a layer of complexity to all users. I don't want to penalize good users just because of the few errant ones.
I am not using any sort of JS library here, so any solution should not suggest the use of one. Also, the reason for not using a library was simply not to add extra weight to the page load to deliver a widget. I understand that "jquery" for example is small, but in my case, even 24k compressed seems like an overkill for a widget delivery that contains no core code for the widget.
Has anyone dealt with such issues before? What are your solutions to these?
There are reliable ways of determining the size of an element using JavaScript. You're quite right that you may need to iterate up the tree in some cases, but the answer you get will ultimately be quite valid.
Although you don't want to directly include any library code in this project, you may consider looking at how the major libraries implement their "what's the width of this element" functions to drive your own implementation.
Beware of quirks mode too.
I'd check to see of the page has Jquery, if not load it into the page using no-conflict mode. Then use jQuery to examine the page.
See: How to embed Javascript widget that depends on jQuery into an unknown environment

FLIR: avoiding ugly page loads

I'm building a site that makes extensive use of FLIR to allow the use of non-websafe fonts. However, pageloads are an ugly process, as first the HTML text version of each field loads and then (a few hundred milliseconds later) it's replaced by its FLIR image counterpart.
Is there any way to avoid this sort of thing? I've got a client presentation in a few hours and I know it'll raise eyebrows. My situation is sort of related to this question which is in regards to sIFR, not FLIR. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Justin
Try putting the following rules into your stylesheet:
.flir-replaced{text-indent:-5000px;}
.flir-image{display:block;}
You may have to modify your other FLIR-related CSS rules to account for the fact that the generated images are now vertically aligned to the top of their respective parents.
It's been a while since I used FLIR, but I recall there was an internal caching method that would pull from cache on load instead of generate it each time.
http://docs.facelift.mawhorter.net/configuration:settings
Also, you can't have too many on the page at once. I found that between 6-10 were optimal for performance.
Are you on shared hosting? Is your css/js compressed? I found that the initial load was a little slow, but fairly quick after the images had been generated.

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