Since our first post on the subject is a bit dated by now, we put together a fresh list of our favourite modal boxes. Enjoy!
ColorBox
- jQuery 1.3 and up
- Size: Less than 9KB
- My personal favourite. Very light weight, Utilizes jQuery and has a very well formed CSS.
- Get ColorBox
ShadowBox
- Works Standalone but supports both jQuery or MooTools
- Size: 1,2 Mb (full package)
- Works with both MooTools, jQuery and by itself. It is very configurable and has a well documented API. Unfortunately this ubiquity shows on the file size.
- Get ShadowBox
Slimbox 2
- Library: jQuery
- Size: 4 Kb
- As seen above, extremely light weight. It also has a little sister running MooTools for those in favor of that, also at 4kb.
- Get SlimBox 2
FancyBox
- Library: jQuery
- Size: 366 Kb
- For all you fancy pants mac people. Nice easing effects and transitions
- Get FancyBox
FaceBox
- Library: jQuery 1.2.1 and up
- Size: 7.1KB
- If you ever need a face bookish modal box it doesn’t get much better than this.
- Get FaceBox
There are obviously a lot more JavaScript modal boxes out there but these are our favourites. You may also consider writing your own modal box. The benefits are that your modal box will be custom tailored for the project and you get exactly the behavior you’re after. On the down side it can be a bit time consuming.
Do you have a favourite? Tell us in the comments!
