Fluidbox

Introduction

Opening images seamlessly in a lightbox on your page without interruption. This demo was inspired by how Medium handles embedded images. Made by . This project was originally initiated as a personal challenge to replicate Medium’s lightbox module, but it soon developed into a full-fledged jQuery plugin.

Current status:
Latest Github release npm downloads Starred Watchers

You can follow the links below to read how I’ve tackled the challenge, view the jQuery plugin on GitHub, or get the latest stable release hosted on CDNJS.

This demo is currently running on the edge release of Fluidbox. If you're using Fluidbox for production, I strongly recommend using the latest stable release and not the edge release (latest commit). The stable release(s) are also available via CDNJS.

In the wild

Fluidbox is implemented in:

How does it work?

Fluidbox works by replacing your markup, which should be as follow:

<a href="/path/to/image" title="">
    <img src="/path/to/image" alt="" title="" />
</a>

…into…

<a href="/path/to/image" class="fluidbox fluidbox__instance-[i] fluidbox--closed">
    <div class="fluidbox__wrap" style="z-index: 990;">
        <img src="/path/to/image" alt="" title="" class="fluidbox__thumb" style="opacity: 1;">
        <div class="fluidbox__ghost" style="width: [w]; height: [h]; top: [t]; left: [l];"></div>
    </div>
</a>

…where:

Variable Description
i Unique ID of the Fluidbox instance. New instances of Fluidbox will have new values.
w Computed width of the thumbnail, in pixels.
h Computed height of the thumbnail, in pixels.
t Computed offset, from the top and in pixels, of the thumbnail relative to its container.
l Computed offset, from the left and in pixels, of the thumbnail relative to its container.

The replaced and rendered markup for each image targeted with Fluidbox can be presented in a three-dimensional way as follow:

Three-dimensional visualization of rendered Fluidbox markup.

Each initialized Fluidbox instance can therefore be styled independently from each other using CSS alone, requiring no further manipulation via JS (unless required on the user's behalf for specific implementations). Fluidbox listens to the click event triggered on the ghost element, .fluidbox__ghost, and toggles between two binary states, open or closed.

Usage notes

Dependencies

TThe latest version of Fluidbox require two dependencies: jQuery v1.7 or above, and Ben Alman's debounce/throttle plugin. Yes, and that's all! For jQuery, I recommend using the latest stable build of 1.x, although I have not encountered any issues if 2.x is used. I usually use Google APIs, since many other sites are using it and the end-user probably has a cache of it sitting somewhere on their machine already. As for other plugins, I recommend using CDNJS.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery-throttle-debounce/1.1/jquery.ba-throttle-debounce.min.js"></script>

Fluidbox will still function if the debounce/throttle plugin is not included. However, Fluidbox will throw a warning message in the browser console, due to the fact that unthrottled resize events fired from the window object is too frequent and will lead to significant performance degradation.

For advanced users who are more comfortable with building, you may modify Gruntfile.js in the repo's root directory to include other libraries should the need arise.

Basic usage

In order to activate Fluidbox, simply chain the .fluidbox() method to your selector of choice on DOM ready—note that you must use an anchor element <a>:

$(function () {
    $(selector).fluidbox();
});

The plugin will automatically check if the selector is:

  1. an anchor element, <a>, and
  2. contains one and only one <img /> element (can be nested as an indirect descendant, to support the HTML5 <picture> standard.

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="/path/to/image" alt="" />
</a>

Fluidbox also supports the new HTML5 <picture> element (see demo). You can use it as follows:

<picture>
    <source media="(max-width: 400px)" srcset="/path/to/smallImage">
    <source media="(min-width: 1200px)" srcset="/path/to/largeImage">
    <img src="/path/to/defaultImage" alt="" />
</picture>

Configuration

Several options are available for configuration, also available in the readme. Fluidbox follows the following model of setting overrides—in increasing order of priority:

  1. Default settings in plugin file.
  2. Custom settings in .fluidbox() jQuery method.
  3. Custom settings in the element's HTML5 data- attribute.

On HTML5 data attributes

In order to ensure that Fluidbox does not clash with commonly-used HTML5 data- attributes, it is tuned to listen in to namespaced attributes. For example, for the immediateOpen property, the corresponding attribute would be data-fluidbox-immediate-open. As per HTML5 specification, you should avoid using camel-case in your HTML5 data attributes because that is parsed into dash-delimited keys by the dataset method (jQuery uses .data() as an alias).

Property Type Default Description
immediateOpen Boolean false Determines if Fluidbox should be opened immediately on click. If set to yes, Fluidbox will open the ghost image and wait for the target image to load. If set to no, Fluidbox will wait for the target image to load, then open the ghost image.
loader Boolean false Determines if a loader will be added to the manipulated DOM. It will have the class of .fluidbox__loader.
maxWidth Integer 0

Sets the maximum width, in screen pixels, that the ghost image will enlarge to. When set to zero this property is ignored. This property will not override the viewportFill.

This option should not be specified (≥0) in lieu with maxHeight. In the event that both maxWidth and maxHeight are specified (≥0), maxWidth takes precedence. Fluidbox will throw a warning in the console discouraging this use.

maxHeight Integer 0

Sets the maximum height, in screen pixels, that the ghost image will enlarge to. When set to zero this property is ignored. This property will not override the viewportFill.

This option should not be specified (≥0) in lieu with maxWidth. In the event that both maxWidth and maxHeight are specified (≥0), maxWidth takes precedence. Fluidbox will throw a warning in the console discouraging this use.

resizeThrottle Integer (milliseconds) 500 Determines how much to throttle the viewport resize event that fires recomputing of Fluidbox dimensions and repositioning of the ghost image.
stackIndex Integer 1000 Determines how high up the z-index will all Fluildbox elements be. Leave this option as default, unless you have other relatively or absolutely positioned elements on the page that is messing with Fluidbox appearance.
stackIndexDelta Integer 10 Determines how much the z-index will fluctuate from stackIndex in order to allow visually-correct stacking of Fluidbox instances. With the default settings, this means that the effective range of z-indexes Fluidbox operates in will be between 990–1010. For elements that should go under the overlay, they should have a z-index of less than 1000.
viewportFill Float (fraction) 0.95 Dictates how much the longest axis of the image should fill the viewport. The value will be coerced to fall between 0 and 1.

Basic demonstrations

Fluidbox is designed to be versatile, flexible and easy to implement. It works with linked images that satisfy the criteria stipulated above — regardless of how they are arranged on the page. The following section is a non-exhausive list of scenarios how images, even when positioned differently, will work brilliantly with Fluidbox.

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

Best fit strategy

Fluidbox 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).

…and it works with the HTML5 <picture> element

Fluidbox supports the new HTML5 <picture> element as of version 2.0, by relaxing the filtering criteria to match the standard markup. Note that in order for the following example to work, you will need to visit this page with a browser that supports the HTML5 <picture> element.

Other features

Higher resolution original

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 2000×2000.

Restrictive zooming

Fluidbox is also built to handle linking to images that do not have the sufficient size to fill the page. The following thumbnail links to an image that is only 250×250px large — in most cases, insufficient to fill the viewport (unless you are using this site on a very small viewport).

Differential aspect ratios

Fluidbox supports different aspect ratios of the thumbnail and higher resolution version of the image.

Support for immediate opening with background preloading of target image

Fluidbox provides you the option that will launch an opened Fluidbox instance immediately upon click, even when the target image has not been loaded yet. The two static images below link to a (very heavy) GIF file. If you have tested this feature before, please clear your cache or use your browser's incognite mode, so that you can observe the actual effect—once loaded these images will stay in your browser cache and will nullify the effects of simulated loading of a heavy image file.

Original file size: 8mb
Default: immediateOpen: false
Opens after target is loaded.
Original file size: 5.7mb
Modified: immediateOpen: true
Opens immediately, doesn't wait for target to load.

Support for image borders and paddings

Fluidbox also supports extraenous dimensions added to the element in the form of border(s) and/or paddings(s):

Absolutely positioned images

Fluidbox handles absolutely positioned images without any problem. The image below is absolutely positioned within its parent, the grey container:

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).

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 (>600px).

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Advanced demonstrations

In this segment I will introduce you to more complex and advanced features of Fluidbox. In many cases you will not find the need of the following features — however, to developers who intend to extend Fluidbox functionality, listen to custom events and even initiate custom triggers should continue to read on.

As the demo below are highly advanced, I have included code snippets whenever possible. You can toggle them by clicking on the show/hide buttons.

Implementing Fluidbox with dynamically-added content

Fluidbox also works well with dynamically-added links, as long as you call the .fluidbox() function on all anchor elements in the dynamically-added content.

Custom event handlers and callbacks

From v1.4.1 onwards, Fluidbox will trigger custom events depending on the state of the current (and only) instance of Fluidbox. Please refer to the documentation for detailed description of each custom event. You can listen to custom events by binding them using the .on() method, e.g. $(selector).on('openstart.fluidbox', function() {...});. Remember that Fluidbox events are namespaced using fluidbox.

Custom events that are fired will be logged here. You can also check your browser console.

    Fluidbox imparted with the ability to trigger custom namespaced events. For example, the reposition trigger will invoke the internal repositioning of the ghost element and update its dimensions. When calculation is completed, this will then trigger a namespaced custom event known as computeend.fluidbox.

    This custom event is very useful when a layout change has been triggered without an accompanying viewport resize event: for example, changing the width of a thumbnail in a flexbox layout.

    Show HTML
    <a href="#" id="custom-event-2" role="button">Add random GIF to gallery</a>
    <div>
    	<a href="/path/to/image1" title="" class="custom-event-2"><img src="/path/to/image1" title="" alt="" /></a>
    	<a href="/path/to/image2" title="" class="custom-event-2"><img src="/path/to/image2" title="" alt="" /></a>
    </div>
    Show JS
    // Initialize Fluidbox
    $('.clustom-event-2').fluidbox();
    
    // Attach click event to button that adds new child
    $('#custom-event-2').click(function(e) {
    	e.preventDefault();
    	var $newChild = $('<a />', {
    		'class': 'custom-event-2',
    		'title': '',
    		'href': '/path/to/image'
    	}).append($('<img />', {
    		'src': '/path/to/image',
    		'title': '',
    		'alt': ''
    	}));
    
    	// Enable Fluidbox on newly added child
    	var $t = $(this);
    	$t.next().append($newChild).find('a').fluidbox();
    
    	// Trigger repositioning of ghost element after new element's image is loaded and reflow is done (set arbitrarily after 250ms)
    	var img = new Image();
    	img.onload = function() {
    		window.setTimeout(function() {
    			$t.next().find('a.custom-event-2').fluidbox('reposition');
    		}, 250);
    	};
    	img.src = $newChild.find('img').attr('src');
    });

    Public functions/methods as custom triggers

    Fluidbox exposes several public methods that can be called to manipulate individual instances. Below is an example of listening to the viewport scroll event to trigger the closing of a Fluidbox instance via .fluidbox('close'). Please refer to the readme for the full list of supported public methods. The example also uses emitted custom events to toggle the appearance of image captions, descriptions or social sharing buttons (currently unsupported by Fluidbox officially, but requested by many). I have chosen to listen to the openend.fluidbox event to show metadata, and the closestart.fluidbox event to hide it.

    On the last weekend of summer-ish weather, we decided to have the final picnic before autumn begins.
    Show code
    var $caption = $('<div />', { 'id': 'custom-trigger-1-social' });
    $caption
    .html('<div class="img-caption"></div><p class="img-desc"></p><ul><li>Share on:</li><li><a href="#">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="#">Pinterest</a></li><li><a href="#">Twitter</a></li></ul>')
    .appendTo($('body'));
    $(document).on('click', '#custom-trigger-1-social', function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
    });
    
    // Initialize Fluidbox
    $('#custom-trigger-1')
    .fluidbox()
    .on('openend.fluidbox', function() {
        var $img = $(this).find('img');
        $('#custom-trigger-1-social')
        .addClass('visible')
        .find('.img-caption')
            .text($img.attr('title'))
            .next('.img-desc')
                .text($img.attr('alt'));
    })
    .on('closestart.fluidbox', function() {
        $('#custom-trigger-1-social').removeClass('visible');
    });
    
    // Call public methods
    $(window).scroll(function() {
    	$('#custom-event-2').fluidbox('close');
    });

    Customising overlays

    From v1.3.5 onwards, the overlayColor configuration has been removed from the jQuery .extend() settings. Instead, users can now freely specify overlay colors (or even overlay images) by modifying the background-color property of .fluidbox-overlay. Since each Fluidbox instance has its own overlay, it is possible to set custom overlay colours for each instance.

    Note: The Fluidbox overlay have an opacity of 1. In order to change the transparency of the overlay, I strongly recommend using the alpha channel of the rgba() specification, as Fludibox will manually toggle the opacity between 0 and 1 (therefore overriding all opacity styles you have specified).

    Custom colours and gradients

    The following is an example of a Fluidbox instance with a custom overlay colour (CSS written in SASS flavour):

    Show code
    .fluidbox-overlay {
    	    .overlay-1 & {
    	        background-color: rgba(255,190,78,.85);
    	    }
    	    .overlay-2 & {
    	        background-color: transparent; /* To override default style */
    	        background-image: linear-gradient(
    	            to top left,
    	            rgba(130,168,158,0.85),
    	            rgba(134,150,173,.85)
    	        );
    	    }
    	}

    Overlay images

    Oh wait — you can even use custom overlay images. However, since the opacity of the overlay is only toggled between 0 and 1, you will have to use a pseudo-element in order to atler the opacity of the overlay image (since it is not possible to dictate the transparency of a background image, unlike rgba() values):

    Show code
    .fluidbox-overlay & {
        .overlay-3 & {
            background-color: #000; /* To override default style */
            &::before {
                background-image: url('http://i.imgur.com/3qj1wfN.jpg');
                background-position: center center;
                background-repeat: no-repeat;
                background-size: cover;
                content: '';
                position: absolute;
                top: 0;
                left: 0;
                bottom: 0;
                right: 0;
                opacity: .33333;
                -webkit-filter: blur(4px);
            }
        }
    }