Introduction to Lightboxes

[drupalize.me] [Learn Drupal] ♪[music]♪ [Introduction to Lightboxes] [Lightboxes and Drupal 7] [Chapter 1 with Kyle Hofmeyer] [Lightboxes. So many, what one do I use] In this series we're going to cover lightboxes. We're going to cover different types of lightboxes. We're going to discuss where you can learn about them, where you can get them. If you do a search for Drupal and lightboxes, you're going to learn that there are a lot of options out there. In fact, there's so many, "Which one do I use?" is a pretty common question. And it's not a matter of just, "Which one do I use?" but "Why would I want to use that one?" and "Once I choose one, how do I go about using it?" Well, before we start to dive into this and show you a nice page on Drupal that will give you an overall comparison of them, the first question a lot of people might ask is, "What is a lightbox?" Simply put, what a lightbox does is it allows you to bring content to the user's attention. And most lightboxes will darken the page behind it while highlighting, or creating a "light box" that contains the content that the user clicked and wanted to learn more about, or that the site designer wants you to pay more attention to. A very, very common use of a lightbox on the Web today is to highlight a photo or use it with photo galleries. This way they can highlight the image and get rid of all of the distraction of the rest of the page, so you can pay more attention to the image itself. It also gives us the ability to show a larger image without having the constraints of the page layout behind us. It's just a great technique. A lot of people are starting to use it. It's got its pros, it's got it's cons. But this lesson is about lightboxes and how to go about going and using one and implementing one. So, now that we know what a lightbox is, how do we go about choosing the right lightbox for us? Well like I said, go ahead and google "lightbox Drupal," and you're going to find that there are a lot of modules out there. And they're all actually pretty fantastic modules. But to figure out which one you need depends on your needs. How do you go about doing this? Take these bullet points in hand and think about it, and it will help you decide the exact lightbox module that will work for you. The first thing you have to think about is what will you use it for? If you need this lightbox just to do something as simple as an image in a lightbox, well some of them may just have way too many features for you, and you just don't even need them. So, you may want to find a lightbox that's just a quick, down and dirty, "This is a lightbox." You also might need particular features. Your lightbox might need to be able to handle HTML inside itself. It may need to be able to handle images and video. So, you want to think about what your particular features are when choosing your lightbox because not every lightbox is created the same. Some of them weren't designed to do that on purpose. So, go ahead and look at the features of the lightbox and see if it fits your needs. Also--other modules integration. Now this could be a 2-way street here. Do other modules integrate the lightbox that you need? Or does the lightbox work with other modules, or did it build other modules that work with itself. Now, there's a lot of things to think about. And the reason why I'm saying this is you might already have your site started, and you might already be using a set of modules. Well, check to see if those modules work with a particular lightbox. Then your lightbox is somewhat chosen for you already. So, definitely look at that. Also if you know certain needs that you're going to have in the future you might find a lightbox that works with modules that you know you will be needing. Or find out, "Oh, I might need that module and look, it works with this lightbox." So, take a look at that as well. And then finally you might want to think about the performance and compatibility of that particular lightbox. Not all lightboxes, like I said, are created equal. Some are heavier duty than others because some of them have a large feature set. So, this can sometimes start getting a lot of code in its JavaScript. Also compatibility, you might want to think, will it work with browsers? I might have to support IE6. Well, not all of them do that anymore. So, think about that when it comes to things, the compatibility. Also some of them do use third-party JavaScript libraries to do the lightbox functionality, and then they just built a triple module around it. Most of those, the JavaScript library is free. But think about it. Some of them are not, and you might want to make sure that you don't want to do one that's paid, or you want to do one that's paid, so think about that as well. So, these are a lot of things that you want to think about when it comes to choosing the right lightbox. [drupalize.me] [Learn Drupal]