J'bloo

Simple jQuery Modal Window Tutorial

This modal window tutorial uses a rel attribute to indicate whether a link opens a modal window using inline content. You’ll witness a few popular jQuery methods in action like the .click() and .css() methods.

Live Demo

How to create a stunning and smooth popup using jQuery

In this jQuery tutorial, you’ll discover a technique for creating a slick modal window that appears when the user clicks on the triggering element (in this case, form submit input, but you can easily modify it into other HTML elements like <a>). The tutorial will also show you how you can deal with keypress events so that you can incorporate keyboard shortcuts into your interface.

Live Demo

ModalBox is a JavaScript technique for creating modern (Web 2.0-style) modal dialogs or even wizards (sequences of dialogs) without using conventional popups and page reloads. It’s inspired by Mac OS X modal dialogs. ModalBox is built with pure JavaScript and is very lightweight (10kb).

Requirements: Safari, Camino, Firefox 1+ and Internet Explorer 6+, Opera 8+
Demo: http://wildbit.com/demos/modalbox/
License: License Free

Code Central has shown us how easily one can create a lightbox using YUI’s Dialog class. The lightbox incorporated many new features, along with old features such as drop and drag, it has an image preloader, it can scale large images to fit the window, it has a maximum button that allows you to inflate scaled images. You can even double click on the title bar to switch between maximized and scaled mode (for images that are larger than browser’s window area). You can also hide the lightbox conveniently by clicking on the image.

Requirements: Firefox 2+, Netscape 8+, IE 6+, Opera 9+
Demo: http://test.thecodecentral.com/demos/lightboxrev/lightbox.html
License: License Free

The mooSlideBox v3 is a small and slim ajax based extension or replacement of the common “lightbox” that can be found on nearly every page. This lightbox clone works in IE 6/7, Opera and Firefox. Some users complained that the slider isn’t unobstrusive through its use of the bump effect, you can change the effect in the mooslide.js. Replace the Fx.Transitions.Bounce.easeOut with something like Fx.Transitions.linear.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.artviper.net/test/ajaxslide/
License: License Free

We have seen lots of Javascript Lightbox plugins. It is good to see someone who has created a valid markup Lightbox purely with XHTML and CSS for us.
ThinkVitamin has published a detailed tutorial of How to Create a Valid Non-Javascript Lightbox. Please note that this article assumes you have a basic understanding of (X)HTML and CSS.

If you are using Mac OS X, you should have come across Growl. Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X, it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you’re already in. I think this feature is really useful for our web applications as well. Daniel Mota has created Growl 2.0 with Mootools, so that we can easily integrate this effect into our web applications.

Requirements: MootoolsFramework
Demo: http://icebeat.bitacoras.com/mootools/growl/
License: License Free

When we are developing web applications, we always need some kind of dialog boxes to inform the users the status of the system. Leigeber has put together a lightweight (~4.5kb) JavaScript dialog box library. The script currently offers four dialog styles: alerts, warnings, prompts and success.

JavaScript dialog box library is nothing to add to your page except references to the JavaScript and CSS if you choose not to incorporate them in your existing files. The Divs are dynamically added to the DOM when the function is called. The function currently relies on a content wrapper to calculate the page height however you could use the body height but the background overlay would only cover the currently visible content. The variable for the wrapper ID as well as the speed and timer settings are available at the top of the JS file. The script is tested working in IE 6/7, Firefox 2/3, Opera and Safari.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://sandbox.leigeber.com/dialog/dialog_box.html
License: License Free

I would like to share two Digg Spy jQuery scripts that you can use on your site. A few years ago Digg released a very cool little visualisation tool called Digg Spy (it’s since been upgraded to the Big Spy). Recently Realmac Software released the site QuickSnapper which makes use of the similar spy technique.

if JavaScript is turned off, the list of snaps is visible by default. It only keep pulling in new items until it hits the end. jQueryforDesigners shows us how we can keep the list looping in “Simple jQuery Spy Effect Tutorial“, and in a follow up tutorial he’ll show us how to hook this in to an Ajax hit that doesn’t hammer your server and keeps the effect nice and smooth too.

You can also get the “jQuery Spy Plugin” from LeftLogic. It gives you the Digg Spy effect immediately as well. You can have your very own spy, for anything, with only a few lines of JavaScript.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://jqueryfordesigners.com/demo/simple-spy.html
Demo: http://leftlogic.com/jquery_spy/spy.html
License: License Free

Bumpbox is another lightbox clone with a few advantages over other lightboxes – it supports not only all common media types but also PDF’s.

Yet, the integration and implementation on your own site is pretty simple. Just add the scripts to your head section, add classes to your links that should use bumpbox, define a rel tag with the size that the bumpbox should have and you’re ready to roll.

Bumpbox automatically detects what kind of filetype you wish to show in the box, so you do not need to specify the type, easing the process of integration.

Requirements: Mootools Framework 1.2
Demo: http://www.artviper.net/bumpbox.php
License: License Free