A drop-in replacement for Lightbox 2 and similar plugins, shedding the bulk of Prototype and Scriptaculous. Improved for mobile devices.
A simple, lightweight WordPress lightbox plugin. See demo here.
Features
- Automattically detect images so they open in a lightbox with no need to adjust markup.
- Works seamlessly with WordPress core images and galleries, and galleries from many plugins.
- Play or puase slideshow within lightbox.
- Enhanced mobile support with swipe gestures on touch devices, improved scaling to maximizes use of screen space, and live adjustment to the browser window and orientation of your phone.
- Browse images with your keyboard: Arrows, P(revious)/N(ext) and X/C/ESC for close.
- Admin panel to configure options. sv
- Localization support.
- Lightweight and fast.
See the plugin in action here: pandaboxwp.com
Background and Thanks
Special thanks to Ulf Benjaminsson, who created this plugin and maintained it for many years.
This plugin lets you keep Lightbox 2 functionality but sheds the bulk of the Prototype Framework and Scriptaculous Effects Library. Warren Krewenki ported Lightbox to jQuery and this plugin is mostly a wrapper to his work.
Additional Info
Copyright (C) 2010-2023 Ulf Benjaminsson.
Copyright (C) 2023-Present PandaboxWP LLC.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Screenshots
Default frontend appearance.
Trouble shooting:
If you have problems with WP jQuery Lightbox, please make sure you try these steps before asking for help. If you ask for help and I find any of these steps would fix the problem, I will just link you back here to do the work yourself.
- Make sure your site is not throwing any javascript errors. Use your browsers javascript console to find out.
If you’re running a custom theme:
-
Make sure you have wp_head(); just before the closing </head> tag of your theme, or you will break many plugins, which generally use this hook to reference JavaScript files.
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For the same reason, always have wp_footer(); just before the closing </body> tag of your theme.
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Many JavaScript optimizers, combiners, minifiers, etc. conflict with wp_localize_script, used to configure this plugin and many others.
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If you have problems with jQuery Lightbox; first disable all JavaScript-optimizing plugins. (Optimize Scripts, W3 Total Cache, WP Minify etc)
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If you develop JavaScript optimizers for WordPress, please play nice with the default API…
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More info about this issue
Lastly:
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Disable all other plugins, one at a time. Try the lightbox between each.
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Revert to the default theme. Did it help? Fix your theme.
-
Search the forums for similar symptoms.
Still have problems? Post a link and describe what issue you’re having, and tell us what of these steps you’ve already tried.
Can the lightbox display the image description instead of the title?
WP jQuery Lightbox grabs texts from three different HTML nodes;
title-attribute of link-to-imageimg tag’s title attribute (if 1 is empty)img tag’s alt attribute (if 1 and 2 is empty)- HTML content of
.gallery-caption or .wp-caption-text (in that order)
Look at how the default TwentyTwelve theme uses these in its galleries and set up your theme so it outputs what you need in these places.
I can see elements of my site through the overlay
It’s a problem of z-index. Check the z-index property for the problematic elements, and force them to be less than 100. (Thanks dway!)
How do I add images to a post?
Inserting Images into Posts and Pages
How do I create a thumbnail gallery?
Upload images to a post (see previous question) and use WordPress’ built-in gallery shortcode:
Note the link="file" – this is crucial! By default the gallery will link your humbnails to a page displaying your image. With link="file" the thumbnails links
directly to the image files – allowing Lightbox to function.
Must fade-in and animation of all *box-scripts be so slow?
WP-jQuery Lightbox lets you configure the animation duration and disable image resizing from the admin panel. Set duration to 0 to disable animations entirely.
For developers:
- Always have
wp_footer(); just before the closing </body> tag of your theme, or you will break many plugins, which generally use this hook to reference JavaScript files.
- Apply lightbox to any content by running
jqlb_apply_lightbox($your_content, "any ID"); It returns a string with all image links lightboxed, grouped by "any id".
- Many JavaScript optimizers, combiners, minifiers, etc. conflict with
wp_localize_script, used to configure this plugin and many others.
- If you have problems with jQuery Lightbox; first disable all JavaScript-optimizing plugins. (Optimize Scripts, W3 Total Cache, WP Minify etc)
- If you develop JavaScript optimizers for WordPress, please play nice with the default API…
- More info about this issue
Can I help you in any way?
Indeed you can!
Translations and help with implementing them would be nice.
ChangeLog
1.5.3 (2024-03-12)
- Improve mobile panzoom behavior
- Remove nav for single images
- Option to use alt as title
1.5.2 (2024-03-12)
1.5.1 (2024-03-12)
- Replace dashicons with svg for nav arrows
1.5 (2024-03-07)
- Added new nav arrow style options
- Added overlay color/opacity options
- Added border color/width options
- Added image shadow option
- Added option to hide infobar
- Improved styling
1.4.9.3 (2024-02-08)
- Added pinch-to-zoom support for mobile
- Improved mobile styling
1.4.9.2 (2024-01-12)
- Update author and contributors
- Update tested WordPress version
- Update minimum PHP version to 7.0
1.4.9.1 (2023-11-05)
- Add webp support
- Remove donation links
1.4.9 (2023-11-03)
- Updated readme author and description
- Fixed image centering on small screens
- Removed white space from end of lines
- Updated default settings for resize_on_demand and margin_size
- Capitalized slideshow links
1.4.8.4 (2023-10-24)
- Removed screenshots and banner image from repository
1.4.8.3 (2021-01-26)
- Added setting to control whether jQuery is loaded in the header or footer.
1.4.8.2 (2021-01-26)
1.4.8.1 (2019-03-24)
- Tested for WordPress 5.x and PHP 7.0
1.4.8 (2015-12-31)
- Fixed translations not being loaded properly
- Fixed support for WordPress 4.4
1.4.7 (2015-09-21)
- Support for WordPress’ new translation system.
- Updated translation for Portugese (Thanks: Pedro Mendonça)
- Added images and CSS for Portugese (Thanks: Pedro Mendonça)
1.4.6 (2015-03-20)
- “Download link” now correctly open a download dialogue instead of displaying the file
- Title, caption and all control elements can now be turned on / off individually
- Added support for custom style sheets (just copy original to your theme’s style folder, and hack away)
- Restructured the HTML slightly, making styling easier
- Added specific CSS selectors for all elements
- Fixed animation speed setting being ignored
- Dropped quirks support for Internet Explorer 8
- Removed help-text setting
1.4.5 (2013-06-09)
- Fit to screen edge on low rez displays (<500px)
- Added global setting to hide title & caption
- Reduced the amount of code running for each image shown
- Updated German translation (thanks Niko23)
- Fix: swipe direction
- Fix: slideshow now waits for images to display before starting timer.
- Fix: support for latest jQuery
- Fix: WordPress encoding wrong quote mark in captions, causing duplicate texts to display.
1.4.1 (2013-02-03)
- Added swipe gestures on touch devices
- Added slideshow
- Added support for multiple sets in one post (use:
group with the gallery-shortcode)
- Added support for arbitrary Download links via the
data-download-attribute
- Added support to pick text from the image ALT-attribute (if title is not available)
- Added translations: Norwegian Bokmål (thanks Ole Martin Kristiansen!)
- Fix regexp to deal with urls like www.gif.org. (Thanks Yannick Berker!)
- Fix changed common IDs to avoid collisions. (you’ll have to update your CSS now!) (Hat tip; Pollmann Frederic)
- Fix better support of Infinite Scroll and similar
- Fix toggling visible state on unrelated object, embed and select nodes. mwolfe02
- Fix leaky CSS on admin page
1.3.4.2 (2011-02-01)
- Fallbacks for people using older jQuery
1.3.4.1 (2011-01-31)
- Updated deprecated jQuery calls (thanks; David Naber)
1.3.4 (2011-12-29)
1.3.3 (2011-06-12)
1.3.2 (2011-05-16)
1.3.1 (2011-05-02)
- Forgot to include languages files! 🙂
1.3 (2011-05-01)
- Improved scaling to make maximum use of display area.
- Supports orientation / resize changes – Lightbox reflows with site.
- Added translation support (Thanks; Martin S & Denis N. Voituk).
- Added option to display download link.
- Added support for disabling all animations (set duration to 0).
- Fixed “duration” not having an effect.
- For Developers: public method to apply Lightbox to any string.
1.2.2 (2011-04-14)
- Use WordPress bundled jQuery instead of forcing the Google CDN
- Fixed the settings link on the Plugins page
1.2.1 (2010-10-24)
1.2 (2010-10-12)
- Added support for Media Library titles and captions.
- Minified the javascript (8.6KB vs 17.8KB)
- Minified the CSS (2.0KB vs 2.7KB)
1.1 (2010-10-09)
1.0 (2010-04-11)
