Top 5 Best jQuery LightBox Plugin

Lightbox is a JavaScript technique used to display large images using modal dialogs but now we are in era of jQuery. And with jQuery, there are many jQuery lightbox plugin available but here is a list of top and best 5 jQuery lightbox plugins which you can easily integrate in your website.

LightBox 2

Lightbox is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on top of the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers. It present images in a slick window, while darkening the rest of the page.

ColorBox

Colorbox is lightweight customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery. And it is one of the top jQuery plugins.

Supports photos, grouping, slideshow, ajax, inline, and iframed content.
Lightweight: 10KB of JavaScript (less than 5KBs gzipped).
Appearance is controlled through CSS so it can be restyled.
Can be extended with callbacks & event-hooks without altering the source files.
Completely unobtrusive, options are set in the JS and require no changes to existing HTML.
Preloads upcoming images in a photo group.

Fancy Box

FancyBox is a tool for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style "lightbox" that floats overtop of web page.

Can display images, HTML elements, SWF movies, Iframes and also Ajax requests
Customizable through settings and CSS
Groups related items and adds navigation.
If the mouse wheel plugin is included in the page then FancyBox will respond to mouse wheel events as well
Support fancy transitions by using easing plugin
Adds a nice drop shadow under the zoomed item

Pretty Photo

prettyPhoto is a jQuery lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also support for videos, flash, YouTube, iframes. 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)!