There is a very nice picture viewing style which is called Lightbox (you can press on the picture as an example).

And there is a simple way how to include this effect in you Joomla site, but you need to know some specific things in order to complete it succesfully.

Since there is a lack of tutorials around the web and I always forget those anoying details - I decided to write it.

Download Slimbox

First of all you should download Slimbox which is using JQuery library instead of Mootools - this is very important. At the moment of writing I use Slimbox 1.7 for MooTools 1.2.

Unzip file contents to /my-Joomla-site/includes/slimbox/ (simply create a new folder called slimbox if it doesn't exist).

Include Slimbox files

The second thing you need to do is to include Slimbox files to your Joomla template.

Open you template index.php file. For this example I use default Joomla template which is called rhuk_milkyway and I open the file /my-Joomla-site/templates/rhuk_milkyway/index.php with a text editor.

Add the following three lines as shown in the picture on the right. If you are using different template - then follow the paths carefully since the paths for the included files should be like /my-Joomla-site/includes/slimbox/js/etc.. (notice the slash at the begining).

Make a hyper-link rel="lightbox"

In Joomla article, select the text you want to make a  hyperlink which will open a new shiny slimbox window with a picture, for example.

• Press the "Insert/edit link" button in your WYSIWYG editor
• Under "General" tab, enter the Link URL and Title
• Under "Advanced" tab, choose "Lightbox" in "Relationship page to target"
• Press "Insert" button ad save the article.

This is it! Now you should be able to create even your own galleries using very nice and simple Lightbox effect.

P.S. we use Slimbox instead of Lightbox because of it's better compatibility with all kinds of browsers and speed.