Ajaxian

Thursday, June 15th, 2006

Matton Image Lightboxes

Category: Showcase

Matton Images has created an Ajax version of lightboxes. A Lightbox being defined as a place to store images that one might be interested in before purchasing. Traditionally, Lightboxes have been a nightmare to use and manage. Ajax allows our users to quickly add images to a Lightbox, through a drag and drop interface. It also allows our users to quickly rearrange the contents of each Lightbox, again through drag and drop.

Darren Glenister from Matton Images told us:

Janos (our lead developer) had a few problems to overcome in development. The first was allowing the Lightbox drop area to always be visible when the user scrolls. He overcame this by using a “floater”. Here the user can drop images upon the floating layer. The second problem occurred on the Lightbox management page (view my Lightboxes). We needed to allow the user to move images from the bottom of the page to the top. This has been achieved by scrolling the page when the user “moves” an image.

To view the drag and add function, please visit matton.com , make a search (within the images section), then pick up a thumbnail image and drop it in the Lightbox area or onto the floating layer if you scroll. The Lightbox management functions can be accessed by clicking the “view my Lightboxes” link. You can move images around, and can also make a direct position “swap” by holding the shift key whilst dragging.

Posted by Dion Almaer at 8:20 am