Global Moxie
http://globalmoxie.com/blog/lightbox-changes.shtmlThe Lightbox Lowdown
My latest work on Big Medium includes improvements to Big Medium's “lightbox” slideshow feature for browsing image galleries.
I’ve been working today on improving Big Medium’s “lightbox” slideshow feature for browsing image galleries.
Up ’til now, you could navigate forward and back through the slideshow by clicking on the image itself; clicking on the left side of the image took you back, and clicking right took you forward.
Alas, while visually elegant, this navigation was far too hidden. It wasn’t visible until you actually hovered over the image, when a forward or back arrow appeared above the image. I received consistent feedback that site visitors took a long time to figure it out, if ever.
Today I updated my development version of Big Medium to move this navigation above the slideshow images. The forward/back arrows are now always visible, making it much clearer how to navigate through the gallery.
Another new slideshow nicety is that clicking anywhere outside of the slideshow now makes it go away. In the past, you had to click the little “X” close box at the bottom of the image to dismiss the slideshow. That’s still an option, but adding this additional new method makes it easier to get back to the page when you’re done browsing the gallery.
Other recent changes elsewhere in Big Medium include a handful of bug fixes and some significant performance improvements to Big Medium’s JavaScript libraries, which makes the interface a bit peppier.
All of these changes will be part of the next beta update, which I expect to update sometime before the end of the month.
Before I release that update, though, I plan to add one more significant feature: the ability to limit editing privileges of individual accounts to only certain sections of a site. Currently all accounts have permission to add content to any portion of a site. The new feature will give webmasters and admins the option to constrain any account to specific sections. I’ll be digging into that feature this week.
Stay tuned, there’s more to come!