Shadowbox Plugin v 1.0

This is an older version of the Mango Blog plugin. Get the newest version.

Shadowbox 3 plugin for Mango Blog 1.3+ to add Lightbox type effects for images, videos (FLV, MOV, AVI, WMV, etc), SWF, inline content, and web pages.

Plugin version:

1.0

Last Updated:

May 12, 2009

Requires:

Mango Blog 1.3+

Auto-install URL:

http://freerksen.googlecode.com/files/mango_shadowbox3.zip

* Update July 21, 2009: Mark Aplet has made an update to this plugin. You can get it from his site.
The only change is he has made the left/right arrows and the close
buttons larger so they are more apparent to the user. Whenever I get a
little bit of free time, I will add his change as well as a couple
other things I have in mind for this plugin. Mark has has a tutorial to help you set up Shadowbox rel linking in the admin. This involves getting into a couple of the Mango Blog code files. The down side is if Mango Blog get’s updated, you may have to go through the turorial again.

There are multiple types of Javascript Lightbox frameworks out there. The most common being the original one built with Prototype and using Scriptaculous. I have never liked Prototype. I always liked jQuery.
There is, however, a jQuery version of Lightbox.

At some point, there comes a time when you want to open more than just pictures in a Lightbox window. That’s where Thickbox comes in. Thickbox is made with jQuery. The problem is that it I always felt that it is clunky and a little unreliable.

Then there is Shadowbox. I ran across Shadowbox a few months back when I was searching for a jQuery Lightbox framework. At the time it was still in version 2. Now it is in version 3.

Shadowbox allows you to open images as well a Flash videos (FLV), SWF files, HTML pages (iframes), HTML (inline content or AJAX), or even videos from MOV, WMV, AVI, etc. On top of all of that, it even comes with adapters so it can use existing functions from jQuery, Prototype, Dojo, YUI, MooTools, and Ext. If you are not using any of these Javascript libraries, it also comes with a default code base. It also comes with over a dozen languages that you can choose from.

Through the settings section of the admin, you will be able to change most of the options for Shadowbox. I haven’t done Coldfusion development is a long time so feel free to look at the code and tell me what I can improve. I would also like to add a tab to the link editing window in Mango Blog, similar to what the Lightbox plugin also for Mango Blog, so you can also create galleries and set other options all through the admin. I would really like it to get to the point where you don’t have to go in to the source code to add the rel attribute or any other attribute. If anyone wants to help me with that, that would be great.

At this point I would like to thank Seb Duggan for all of his documentation and plugins that helped me write this plugin. Like I said, this is my first plugin and one that I really believe the Mango community could use.

See the Shadowbox website for a plethora of examples.

History:
090511 – Plugin started
090512 – Plugin completed. Initial release.