Shadowbox
Using Shadowbox, website authors can display a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating away from the linking page.
Shadowbox is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript. Shadowbox uses HTML markup that validates. It doesn't depend on phony HTML attributes in your anchor tags to make it work. The web has enough problems with standards compliance as it is, and I believe we should try to not perpetuate them.
It's easy to make Shadowbox adapt to whatever platform you choose. This means that you're not tied to a particular framework if you don't want to be.
Customizing the appearance of Shadowbox is easy because it was built with designers in mind. As such, most of its styles can be altered using the only language that's really designed for such a task, CSS. A sample skin is included that demonstrates how the default appearance may be modified to suit your site.
Shadowbox supports all of the most popular web media formats including images, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, Flash, Flash video, HTML, and even external web pages. This makes it easy to display your content without converting it to some other format.
Shadowbox employs a smart plugin detection mechanism that can spare your users from confusing torn image or puzzle piece icons when they don't have the plugins they need. Instead, Shadowbox displays a helpful link to a page where your users can download the software that will allow them to view your content properly.
Shadowbox supports a host of options that make it highly configurable. If you don't like the way something works, chances are very good that you can change it without digging through the code.
Shadowbox is copyright 2007 Michael J. I. Jackson and is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
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Posted on the 27th of February at 10:34 pm
