In WordPress, Drupal and other Web tools there are a thousand and one JavaScript Lightbox routines. One of my favorites is FancyBox 2 because it features many different ways to popup images or html code blocks. Also FancyBox works well with various Splash page Layout routines like Masonry, Isotope, GridAccordion, and Salvattore. Finally, popular CMS tools like Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla all have plugins/extensions and/or iframe access to FancyBox giving Web developers more deployment options.
So there is enough to like about FancyBox as seen in this JSFiddle code example:
[iframe width=”100%” height=”540″ src=”http://jsfiddle.net/jbsurveyer/M9KAm/1/embedded/result,html,js/” allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” frameborder=”0″]
But there is more. FancyBox delivers a number options beyond the online and image examples shown here. Users can generate Fancybox for iframes, image galleries, blocks of HTML, Flash swf files, You tube videos, Google maps – in short a full set of Web media display capabilities. FancyBox has a number of helper routines including button bars, media helpers, and thumbnail options. However, these added helpers require added CSS and JavaScript files to be loaded. This is not necessarily a winning trade-off as added file manipulations can be a problem when interfacing to a CMS or other Web framework.
In sum, FancyBox 2 has a lot of features to like, is relatively simple to use and free for non-commercial use and $90 for unlimited commercial use. Not a bad option.