Emanuele Feronato

Talking about Css.

You may call it Lightbox, or Greybox, or Thickbox, but it’s always the same effect.

When you are on a page, and click on a photo or trig some event, a Lightbox is an effect that fades the pagein the background to show you new content in the foreground.

I mean this effect

In the upper example, when clicking on a photo the site fades to black and shows the photo, in the lower one when clicking on “login” the site fades to white and shows the login form.

There are tons of Lightbox scripts in the web, each one with its unique features and limitations, but all require massive use of Javascript or the installation of javascript frameworks.

In some cases, there are “lightweight” versions with “only” 40KB of Javascript.

This example does not want to compete with those scripts, but if you are looking for a simple, 100% CSS, 0% javascript lightbox, this may help you.

Features of this Lightbox:

100% CSS as said
You can insert any content in it (some scripts out there only allow images) and easily upload your codes to your web hosting provider.

That’s all. Did you need something more? Think wisely…

Let’s start with the CSS

.black_overlay{
	display: none;
	position: absolute;
	top: 0%;
	left: 0%;
	width: 100%;
	height: 100%;
	background-color: black;
	z-index:1001;
	-moz-opacity: 0.8;
	opacity:.80;
	filter: alpha(opacity=80);
}

.white_content {
	display: none;
	position: absolute;
	top: 25%;
	left: 25%;
	width: 50%;
	height: 50%;
	padding: 16px;
	border: 16px solid orange;
	background-color: white;
	z-index:1002;
	overflow: auto;
}

The black_overlay class is the layer that will make the web page seem to fade. It’s a black 80% opaque background as long and wide as the browser that will overlay the web page (look at the z-index) and at the moment is not shown (look at the display).

The white content class is the layer with the photo/login screen/whatever you want to appear in the Lightbox overlay. It’s a white layer to be placed over the black_overlay layer (look at the z-index, greater than the black_overlay one). The overflow allows you to have a scrollable content.

In the html file, put this line just before the tag

Hi, I am an happy lightbox

Now, trig the action you want to open the Lightbox and insert this code:

document.getElementById('light').style.display='block';document.getElementById('fade').style.display='block';

For example, in a link would be:

Click me

Remember to include in the lightbox the code to close it, for example

Hide me

A complete example page could be

	
		
		
	
	
		
This is the main content. To display a lightbox click here
		
This is the lightbox content. Close
		

	

That you can find up and running in this page.

In this example everything is static and preloaded, but you can easily add some php/ajax code to make it more dynamic while keeping the effect 100% CSS based.

Hope you will find it useful, should you use it in one of your works send me a comment and I’ll feature your site as example.