RoeBox 0.9 - Simple Alternative to Lightbox - Lite & Fast

jleekun

Just wanted to share an alternative to Lightbox, if anyone was having trouble or wanted to try something else out.

*I eventually will integrate this into Zenphoto, because Zen rocks.*

Roebox 0.9 was released today and is a combination of Lightbox and Slimbox.
I've tried to make it as easy as possible for someone to get started with little confusion.

I had 4 motivations:

* To create a combination of the genius apps (Light + Slim = Roe).
* To make it as lightweight as possible (including mootools.js).
* To make it as easy as possible to use and install (one folder for everything… but you can change it of course).
* To create an easy “copy & paste & use” html document (roebox.html, which is included in the .zip).

Check it out here:

http://www.septemberthree.com/blog/design/roebox-09-is-here

Have fun and share!

trisweb

Looks cool! I have a lot against light/slim/thick/whatever-box image displays, I really do not believe they're a good interface, more of an effect really. Otherwise, completely obstructive with no regard to best user-based design principles... ah well.

On those lines, if you want to make something really useful...
1) Get rid of the "sliding resizing" effect -- takes FAR TOO LONG to show the image and annoys the heck out of users in the process.
2) ALWAYS MAKE THE BUTTONS DISPLAY IN THE SAME POSITION ON SCREEN. This is the one thing I hate most about the whateverboxes. The links are tiny little things you can hardly click (let alone SEE) and are always changing position on you! I've never known any program that makes navigation so hard.
3) Make it faster! It should show the photo as darned fast as it possibly can once it's loaded. Better yet, USE THE THUMBNAIL as a low-res preview while the old image loads and fade into the new one...

That would make your script unique and useful and better, unlike all the clones that are coming out. Just my 2 cents, sorry for ranting

jleekun

Sweet. Thanks for the advice. It's not a complete release yet. And you're completely right: It is just for the looks.

I'll post up an update in a bit. Thanks Trisweb.

trisweb

Hey, you don't have to I'm just ranting about the usability of them, I don't expect you to do anything if you don't want to

Thanks for listening though...

bitbybit

Tris you noob, use the arrow keys instead of clicking to go between pics! j/k! I wholeheartedly agree with most of your points. My hacked up version of slimbox disables the overlay completely, cuts out the transitions and superfulous sliding blah blah.

The only place I might disagree is in regards to it being just an effect. In my case, it was the answer to how to display large photos w/o scrolling and/or having to almost completely minimize the rest of the gallery design in order to accomodate photos. Different strokes though Either way, I still haven't found "the ideal" solution. In my case it would likely be some sort of super lightweight, cleanly coded, highly browser compatible lightbox/highslide hybrid - but I think that's pretty much a paradox

Annnnyway, i've been so caught up with other things I haven't even had a chance to test or play with the new version of ZP For shame! Hopefully next week sometime. But by all accounts and from the svn revs I played with, should be great You have no idea how excited I am to have subalbum + modrewrite going in ZP!

Jleekun, apologies for the thread hijack I'll make sure to have a look at Roebox when I get around to rebuilding my photo gallery

trisweb

Hey, you never know, maybe Jleekun will have exactly what you're looking for. I also agree that lightbox/etc has its merits for being able to show images at a large size without getting in the way, it could just be done better is all :-)

monster

My hacked up version of slimbox disables the overlay completely, cuts out the transitions and superfulous sliding blah blah.

Can you show use your bitbybitbox
I'm really interested in how it looks like.

jleekun

Sweet guys.

Thanks.

Hey, bitbybit, would love to see your hacked version.

Doug

I agree with Tristan's and bitbybit's comments. For what it's worth, GreyBox does a good job with the user interface.

jimhere

This is great.
I found that altering "durations" in the .js can speed things up, as in"
`overlay: this.overlay.effect('opacity', {duration: 100})`
etc

jabcka

Hi there,
I've install this script on my web site - http://www.buzuba.com.

Would you know how do I add the image description to the bottom of an image pop with roebox? (beneath the image title)
Thanks

s3

Thanks for dropping by jabcka. I've answered that question here:

http://septemberthree.com/share/topic/8

cbeyls

Can anyone tell me what is the difference between this "RoeBox" and my Slimbox ? I've looked at the javascript code: it's exactly the same one, a pure copy-paste. The only difference is the distribution form: RoeBox comes with 2 more files: mootools.js and an HTML page.

So, this Roebox is just yet another Slimbox rip-off.

I've written the Slimbox code from scratch. Some people have created alternative versions by modifying the code to add more functionnalities and they deserve credit for it. But when poeple do a simple copy-paste of another product then rebadge it as their own, I don't agree. Thank you John Saddington.

SubJunk

tris, you said "annoys the heck out of users in the process." but that's an incorrect statement. It may annoy you personally but many people love seeing flashy things like that. I've used Lightbox on a few sites and the people who run the sites have commented on it saying that the people in test groups loved the "image sliding expanding thingy"

I do think it would be annoying if it was a site where people go on with the sole purpose of looking at images in a slideshow manner (quickly going from one to the next) but on sites where there is content as well as images people respond positively, as always, to simple transitional effects, it's the over-the-top effects (things flying around randomly without user intervention) that make most people dislike the site