10+ Excellent Lightbox Plugins in jQuery

jQuery lightbox plugins are being widely used in websites and web applications. They are used for presenting images, videos and html content in an elegant and very focused way. A page with lightbox enabled elements e.g. images a user click will open a modal window where a larger version of the image is presented. The advantages are obvious as users are not required to leave the page to view the content presented by the lightbox and because the area around the featured element is typically faded out focus is increased at what is important. Everyone loves lightbox javascript effects, since the original Lightbox script there has been countless clones generated for all the popular Javascript libraries. Here is a list of some best jQuery lightbox scripts you can find and use them free. 

1. jQuery lightBox plugin

jQuery lightBox plugin is simple, elegant, unobtrusive, no need extra markup and is used to overlay images on the current page through the power and flexibility of jQuery’s selector. lightBox is a plugin for jQuery. It was inspired in Lightbox JS by Lokesh Dhakar.

2. ColorBox

ColorBox is a lightweight customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery. It supports photos, grouping, slideshow, ajax, inline, and iframed content. Its appearance can be controlled through CSS so it can be restyled. Also this plugin can be extended with callbacks & event-hooks without altering the source files. It is completely unobtrusive, options are set in the JS and require no changes to existing HTML.

3. FancyBox

FancyBox is a tool that offers a nice and elegant way to add zooming functionality for images, html content and multi-media on your web pages in “lightbox” style. It is built at the top of the popular JavaScript framework jQuery and is both easy to implement and a snap to customize. It is a responsive lightbox plugin and can be extended using helpers. This plugin uses CSS3 for shadows and rounded corners.

4. Facebox

Facebox is a jQuery-based, Facebook-style lightbox which can display images, divs, or entire remote pages. It’s simple to use and easy on the eyes. Lots of options are available in this plugin to customize it as per your requirement.

5. ChillBox

Inspired by Lokesh Dhakar’s Lightbox, ChillBox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on top of the current page. ChillBox has been developed using the jQuery Framework. ChillBox does not require the use of images for buttons and is fully rendered using jQuery. ChillBox is fully customisable and you can change the range of options to create a unique version of ChillBox that works with a website theme. ChillBox is fully compatible with web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome.

6. Clearbox

Clearbox is a Lightbox-like modal box script to display images, image galleries & various other contents including Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media formats, HTML, inner content, etc. It can show multi-line text information for any content displayed. And, as a unique feature, images displayed can be rotated with a click. Clearbox supports slideshow functionality and every aspect of it can be customized from the settings of the script. It is friendly with Ajax & can display content via Ajax calls. Also, its interface can be presented in any language by supplying a language file.

7. GreyBox jQuery Lightbox

GreyBox jQuery Lightbox can be used to display websites, images and other content in a beautiful way. You can easily alter the style as it is controlled through CSS. It is very lightweight and it does not conflict with popup blockers. Easy to setup and easy to use.

8. Fresco : A beautiful responsive jQuery lightbox

Fresco is a beautiful responsive lightbox. It can be used to create stunning overlays that work great at any screen size, in all browsers on every device.In fact, Fresco in the first truly responsive lightbox. This handles galleries very vell and has a variety of options. Also it’s highly cross browser compatible. To make things even more awesome Fresco comes with fullscreen zoom, retina-ready skins, Youtube and Vimeo integration for HTML5 video and a powerful Javascript API.

9. Lightview

Lightview allows you to easily create the most beautiful overlay windows using the jQuery Javascript library. It supports wide range of medias with gorgeous skins and user friendly APIs. Lightview uses HTML5 to help you deliver the best experience across every browser.

10. Pirobox

Pirobox is an awesome jQuery lightbox plugin that features a slider functionality. It is available free. It has ability to open any kind of files, from inLine content to the swf files, from simple images to pdf files. Another important features are automatic image resizing and drag and drop.

11. jQuery Superbox

jQuery Superbox is a script which allows you display windows with the lightbox effect. This plugin is based in jQuery javascript library. It can display pictures, pictures galleries, external pages, a page element or even AJAX loaded content.

12. prettyPhoto

prettyPhoto is a jQuery lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also support for videos, flash, YouTube, iframes and ajax. It’s a full blown media lightbox. It is very easy to setup, yet very flexible if you want to customize it a bit. Plus the script is compatible in every major browser, even IE6. It also comes with useful APIs so prettyPhoto can be launched from nearly anywhere (yes, that includes Flash)!