Bumpbox is another lightbox clone with a few advantages over other lightboxes – it supports not only all common media types but also PDF’s.

Bumpbox automatically detects what kind of file type you wish to show in the box easing the process of integration.

It has been successfully test with:

• Firefox 3 – 3.5
• Internet Explorer 7 | 8
• Google Chrome
• Apple Safari 3 | 4
• Opera 9.04

Bumpbox uses Mootools. It also uses flowplayer media player for FLV video playback.

For more information: Bumpbox

AnythingZoomer is a jQuery plugin that will zoom just about anything. Image, text and calendar zooming are examples presented on the website. You can even double click on the unzoomed object to see the enlarged version.

Great for those eCommerce websites looking for a product zoomer but don’t want to use Flash.

For more information: AnythingZoomer

Flash has always been the software of choice for playing MP3s in a browser. This poses a problem, however, for those without the Flash Player plugin. Now there is a solution.

PIMP3 is a Javascript MP3 player that uses Scriptaculous and Prototype. All you have to do is provide an MP3 track list in JSON format (using AJAX and a server side script).

The look and feel of the PIMP3 is entirely skinnable by editing the CSS file. Features include configurable runtime options such as autostart and random playback order of tracks.

Will be interesting to see if this can be converted to use jQuery.

For more information: PIMP3

For those of you, like me, who use PHP and Javascript regularly, PHP.JS is a great enhancement. PHP.JS is an open source project where PHP functions are ported to Javascript. This means that the PHP functionality is executed client-side which reduces the load on the server.

Some of the functions that have already been ported are:

• md5()
• date()
• base64_decode()

As the library has become too big to include at once, and having users copy-paste functions to their projects can end up causing maintenance hell, the developers have created a compiler tool that allows programmers to select ONLY the functions they need, and wrap them up in a single php.js file.

Another benefit from this library is that it enhances the functionality of Javascript by adding functions that don’t exist natively in Javascript.

Definitely a great tool for developers.

For more information: PHP.JS

For those of you looking for a Lightbox clone that utilises jQuery, prettyPhoto provides the answer. prettyPhoto supports image galleries, Flash content, video (including YouTube) and embedding external websites using iframes.

It comes with four themes and has been tested and known to work with Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.1.1+, Opera 9+, and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

prettyPhoto is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license. This means it’s freely available for all projects (including commercial projects).

For more information: prettyPhoto