Fluidbox

Replicating and improving the lightbox module seen on Medium with fluid transitions

Introduction

Opening images seamlessly in a lightbox on your page without interruption. This demo was inspired by how Medium handles embedded images. Made by Terry. This project was originally initiated as a personal challenge to replicate Medum's lightbox module, but it soon developed into a full-fledged jQuery plugin. You can follow the links below to read how I've tackled the challenge, or view the jQuery plugin on GitHub

Usage notes

Dependencies

This demo requires the following dependencies:

Basic usage

In order to activate Fluidbox, simply chain the .fluidbox method to your selector of choice on DOM ready:

$(function () {
    $('a').fluidbox();
});

The plugin will automatically check if the selector is:

Important note:

  • Fluidbox will only work with images whose actual dimensions are larger than the displayed dimension.
  • The aspect ratio of the displayed and linked image has to be identical.

In the event that the element that satisfies the selector criteria but failed any one of the above criteria, the element will be ignored and the plugin moves on to the next available element. Therefore, it is important that your Fluidbox element(s) follow the following format. The title and alt attributes of the <img /> element is not used by the plugin, but the alt attribute has to be present for it to be semantically valid.

<a href="...">
    <img src="..." alt="" />
</a>

Configuration

Several options are available for configuration:

Demonstration

Single image

Here we demonstrate the use of a single image. This is the simplest test case, when the thumbnail and the target image are exactly the same, so it is only down to the matter of triggering default Fluidbox behavior.

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum

Linking to a higher resolution counterpart

The built-in functionality also allows you to link a small thumbnail to its higher resolution version. In the test case below, the thumbnail has a resolution of 200*200 while the actual version has a resolution of 3000*3000

Galleries

Fluid box works even when images are arranged in galleries. In this case, they are arranged with the help of flexbox.

The flexbox gallery will collapse into single items when viewed in mobile, or else the thumbnails will be too small — to appreciate the how Fluidbox works in this scenario, do use a wider device (>600px screen width).

Scaling

It also intelligently resizes images such that portrait images will fit perfectly within the viewport, although that means scaling down the image. This effect is pronounced when the viewport and image orientations are different — therefore, the demo below only works on a display with landscape orientation (e.g. not on mobile).

Floated images

Moreover, it also works with floated images - to the left or to the right, it does not matter. The following texts are jibberish, used as filler.

The floated images will be rendered block-level on narrow-width devices, such as mobile phones. To appreciate how Fluidbox works with floated images, you can view this demo on a wider device (>480px).

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