Lightbox is a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

library that displays images and videos by filling the screen, and dimming out the rest of the web page. The original JavaScript library was written by Lokesh Dhakar. The term Lightbox may also refer to other similar JavaScript libraries. The technique gained widespread popularity due to its simple and elegant style. The original Lightbox library used two JavaScript libraries,

Prototype Javascript Framework The Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson in February 2005 as part of Ajax support in Ruby on Rails. It is implemented as a single file of JavaScript code, usually named prototype.js. Prototype is dis ...

and script.aculo.us, for its animations and positioning. In April 2012, the plugin was rewritten for

jQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is u ...

. The open-source nature of Lightbox encouraged developers to modify and fork the code, resulting in plugins such as Colorbox, Magnific Popup, Slimbox or Thickbox. Lightbox scripts are dependent upon a browser's

support. Browsers that do not load the script for whatever reason can instead simply load the image as a separate page load, losing the Lightbox effect but still retaining the ability to display the image.

References

External links

* {{Commons category inline, Lightbox (JavaScript) JavaScript libraries