Attackr.com

You know what a lightbox is – even if you don’t think you do. They’ve penetrated our daily internet lives as a way to dramatically display some content by popping up the content while graying out the background.

There have been some lists created with names of list boxes, but no one has sorted them out into designer-friendly categories. Especially sorted by value-type perspective. Though there are a variety of javascript classes/methodologies used to reproduce the lightbox effect. This post will review the high function lightbox scripts regardless of the class variety used to produce the product.

I’ll rehash the lists, and add some of my findings too – My opinions will be poised from the ease of use, how fast they load and complexity (is it more of a pain in the butt to implement it than it’s worth).

Here are the lightbox clones that seem to stand out, but as I soon learned, standing out means it’s bulky… the prettier it is, the more baggage it is (Kind of like a rich lady traveling?).

Greybox (& Greybox redeux) may be one of the most amazing ones out there, er – I mean pop up lightbox clone scripts. It handles iframes with ease (including a web page inside the pop up) – all of the close buttons are appealing and it’s smooth as butta. Just make room for the 50 suitcases though.

Leightbox (Yes, it’s spelled correctly). I may be in love with script… it’s light – insanely fast, and a painless install. It’s not the flashiest script out there, but when you need something rock solid and fast – it’s Leightbox to the rescue.

Lightbox2 is like it’s namesake – it performs as the original, but it does take things a step (or 2) further – it can handle image sets, so you’ll have the forward/reverse arrows are visible on the popup image – which saves the viewer a little trouble while browsing images. It’s package load is reasonably light, but the ‘Close button’ for lightbox 2 is easy to spot for the user. Lightbox2 seems to have taken the user into account while developing this script.

Lightwindow is a newer one on the scene, but it is a good contender. Easy setup, VERY clean design make it a good choice to integrate into 2.0/3.0 sites. Only a designer could appreciate the rounded corners feature, and the fast image preloading.

Weebox is small, fast and flexible. It’s self-explainatary name says it all. It’s actually one of my final picks along with Leightbox. There is a reported problem with safari web browser, so keep that in mind for the mac audience.

Thickbox is like “old faithful” JQuery-based – always there/always works, but the only complaint is that the stock close button is hard to find for new & inexperienced web users. A big hold back when designing anything that is retail oriented.

Slimbox is another top choice – it’s fast, easy to use and even looks good. One of it’s most useful features is that it does a lot of the ‘little stuff’ that saves some time – auto centers images into the lightbox pop up, scrolls through images in list – even does horizontal scrolling without missing a beat.

Shadowbox the project goals for Shadowbox are rare – their project goals were to develop an unobtrusive piece of code that performed the same way every time. This script even will refuse to scroll – big pitfall of most of these iframe based lightbox clones. If an image is too big – it only shows the area that is within the spec’s of the window – keep the user experience clean and neat.

Smoothbox is another extremely light-weight lightbox script. The setup is quick/easy – it’s not bulky or clunky, and only requires 2 files to operate (css & js, and images of course).

Modalbox is the balance of all of the goals. It’s big enough to look “AMAZING” & light weight enough to move around & setup easily. If you’re developing an online application and want to add the “WOW” factor without a headache – here ya go. You MUST click on the examples and ’see it in action’ buttons on this page. The confirmation box along with the ability to enable/disable client side features is a great idea.

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Headspace2
HeadSpace is a powerful all-in-one plugin to manage meta-data and handle a wide range of SEO tasks. With it you can tag your posts, create custom titles and descriptions that improve your page ranking, change the theme or run disabled plugins on specific pages, and a whole lot more.

Google Sitemap Generator
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. If you have any intention of using the webmaster tools – you should get this plugin so you can keep your sitemaps current & prevent any hold ups from your site not being current with current tags/etc…

Digg-Digg
This is another program that gives your blog visitor’s the opportunity to make it accessible to share a post in a network that can potentially drive more traffic to your site. The integrate “Digg Button” , “Reddit Me Button” , “Dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” Into Wordpress Content. Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz buttons.

Awesomepixgallery
Let’s face it… there isn’t a perfect gallery out there. If it looks good, it’s slow – if it’s ugly is fast and no one wants it anyway. APG is a good compromise between all the features out there. APG does have a superior intergration interface (after you upload pics you have quite a bit of control immediately to place/shape the image).

Email-Users
A plugin for wordpress which allows you to send an email to the registered blog users. Users can send personal emails to each other. Power users can email groups of users and even notify group of users of posts. The best part about this plugin is that you can specify mailing by group, so you only hit the publishers, subscribers/etc…

All in One SEO Pack
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/
http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ I keep going back between this and the headspace2 plugin, both have their advantages. Even though I’m currently on headspace, this is still worth checking out.

Simpler-Contact-Page
Are you tired of all the “bells and whistles” of most WordPress contact forms? Are you exhausted from modifying CSS for hours just to get a contact plugin to display with your theme?
WP-Cache

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to, supposedly, less than a millisecond.
Google Analytic Plugin

• Google Analyticator supports the following features:
• Standard Google Analytics tracking support
• Provides a widget that can be used to display visitor stat information on the front-end
• External link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress
• Download link tracking
• Support for hiding Administrator visits without effecting Google Analytics’ site overlay feature
• Support for any advanced tracking code Google provides
• Easily installable only requiring the user knows their UID
• Allows code to be placed in the footer to ensure faster load times
• Complete control over options; disable any feature if needed

Socialble Bookmarking Plugin
Social bookmarking sites allow your blog visitors to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find on your website. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts – making each post as accessible as possible. I’m currently using Digg Digg, but it doesn’t hurt to stay familiar with updates to the social networking sites. Sometimes what one plugin misses – the other will catch.

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www.syrbot.com – when you visit the site it should say, “Thanks for visiting from ______ . This can be a critical component since you could ideally store the information from this visit in a database, recording exact zip code regions that your are targeting your marketing to.
If you have any intention of selling advertising, this can be good ammunition to show that you know who your audience is – where they’re located and their demographic profile.
To get an idea of how many variables are available about the person browsing your web page – look at this test page for syrbot.com: Test Page.
The first part of the test page is the geo caching element (finding out where you are, the apache var’s profile you as to which os you’re using, resolution and on and on. All critical info when you want to find out who you’re designing your site for. Knowing if your visitors are all using handheld devices would be a critical piece of knowledge – especially if you think you need to have a heavy flash site or graphic rich site. You could make all your customers happy by trimming the site down to streamlined graphics and mostly text arranged in a friendly format for a tiny pocket pc or iphone/palm browser.
It’s an easy argument to stress the importance of keeping up with who you are serving your pages to.
Please leave a comment if you know of any uses for geo caching/etc that would be useful to other people. A stronger point is to have ammunition when assisting a client with assessing their needs.  Here is a good link if you want to keep tabs on a good thread for how to get started with geo caching. The link is updated periodically – mostly questions, but some time saving advice if you can read between the lines.

Dare I Dream of Becomming Bigger Than Craigs List?

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