Floatbox version 3 released.

This brings a lot of new stuff to the table including direct loading of flash, quicktime, youtube, ajax and inline divs and better programmability.

There's support for international localized languages. If your visitor's browser is setup to use one of the 15 (and counting) supported languages, tooltips and other text will show in that language. Also, the graphics used for navigation etc. will auto-switch over to international symbols with no English text on them.

And a bunch of eye-candy too. The new version fades and animates down on exit, not just on start and on content change like V2. It can zoom-start and end from and to thumbnails where the effect is that of the image growing off of the page. You can resize an image by clicking on it. And it's got new clickable popup thumbnails that can appear on mouse over and disappear on mouse out. Oh yeah, and new drop shadows too. Take a look at the demo to see what the hell I'm talking about.

Enjoy...

Comment page is closed

The old floatbox comments page is now closed. It was beginning to attract too many spammers and really wasn't a good layout for having topic-oriented conversations. This forum is the replacement and will hopefully encourage more user-to-user direct support. Guests can read anything here, but to post you need to register.

Important Update Released

Version 3.12 is released. This fixes a serious problem with IE6 browser detection. XP Service Pack 3 broke the browser detection floatbox was using and this created numerous problems for IE6 site visitors. (See the download and change log page for details.)

Everyone is strongly encouraged to update to v3.12 to fix this serious problem. IE6 is still 25 or 30% of the browser share market.

And sorry for the inconvenience...

Version 3.20 Released

See the download page for change log details.

Most of the changes, enhancements and fixes in this version are in response to issues and requests raised in this forum. I really appreciate the way the board member's participation has contributed to making floatbox better.

Floatbox v3.50!

A major new release that a LOT of work has gone into over the last few months. Please refer to the download page for the change log listing of enhancements and fixes that have gone into this release. Floatbox is now certainly mature, feature rich, very solid and yet quite easy to deploy. I believe it deserves its new tag-line: "The premier javascript windowing system".

Floatbox is no longer free. Legal use on any commercial site now requires a paid registration. Please see the license page for details.

I hope you enjoy using this new release and continue to find value in what it can do for your web site.

Installed License Key Now Required

Reluctantly, I have added the need to have a license key installed with new versions of floatbox. Without the license key, you will periodically get annoying little registration reminder popups.

This needed to be done because the ratio of registered to unregistered usage is extremely poor. Voluntary registration simply does not work very well. But a BIG THANK YOU to those folks who did register under the honour system.

Registered users: you should already have received your new license keys by email.

Free site users (personal hobby sites, public service non-profits): Drop me a message via this site's contact form and let me know the domain name you want to install on. I'll check out the site and maybe provide a license key for it.

There's also some good changes and fixes in version 3.52 that was posted today.

Version 3.53.0 Released

New version released today. This brings a new image/thumbnail cycler, better API/Library support and documentation, better shadows, support for Windows Media Player, and some other tweaks that have resulted from user requests.

Check the change log on the download page for the full list of changes.

Version 3.54.0 Released

There's a reasonably large basket full of enhancements and a smaller number of bug fixes. Check out the change log on the download page for the full scoop.

Most of the stuff that's been requested through this forum has found its way into this release. An easy to overlook addition is the new fb.ajax library function - a very simple and reliable way to get AJAX actions integrated with your pages. There's also a new configurator in the package which can make it a lot easier to setup your preferences and option settings.

Enjoy...

Lower Prices for Multi-Paks

Prices have been reduced for multi-paks of registration licenses. Please see the registration page for pricing details. Did you know that a floatbox multi-pak makes a great last minute stocking stuffer???

Also, a redistribution license is now available for integration with software packages. Contact me if you are interested in this.

Version 4.00!

1 year and 3 days after the major update that was v3.50, I'm excited to be able to offer version 4.00. There's a huge number of enhancements and a smaller amount of bug fixes listed in the change log over on the download page. Please have a read of that to get a good start on understanding what's now in the 'box.

Highlights are enhanced tooltips, non-modal floatboxes that enable a multi-windowed environment, auto-setting of html content height, better and more flexible option setting, and a greatly expanded API and functions library.

No need to try to describe everything here. Check out the change log, the demo pages and the updated docs. Have fun, and spread the word....

v4.03 - A recommended update

Version 4.03 is a recommended update for all floatbox users. The fixes and enhancements that have been made are detailed in the change log on the download page. An important fix is the one for the issue described in the forum topic little black dot.

Please be aware that there are two changes in the way floatbox is included on web pages.

1) It is recommended that v4 users add an additional include line in their page headers to load options.js directly rather than letting floatbox.js do a lazy fetch of it. Loading options.js directly can in some cases speed up the floatbox initialization and make the anchors clickable and usable sooner.
The recommended include lines are now:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/floatbox/floatbox.css?v=403" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="/floatbox/floatbox.js?v=403"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/floatbox/options.js?v=403"></script>
with path changes as required and the optional 'v' querystring if you want to avoid browser cache problems when upgrading.

2) Framebox.js is no longer included in the floatbox package. This was the version of floatbox that constrains the floatbox content display to a particular iframe or frame document and allows floatbox to be used on frameset web sites. The same functionality is now provided by appending ?framed to the floatbox.js include path, or by setting framed:true in fbPageOption. This is detailed in the instructions.

I would like to give a big thank you to all forum members. The input you have provided through this board has been by far the biggest driver to making floatbox more reliable, more capable, and more fun.

Cheers...
...Byron

v4.11 - Version release

Check out the change log on the download page for all the juicy details.

Some good stuff is here including better content measuring and scrollbar handling, friendlier event handling, accessibility enhancements for better integration with sites designed for US Section 508 compliance.

The API has been strengthened by providing DOM2 addEvent handling that brings IE events pretty close to standards, a nifty little wrapper for the Google language translation service and some other goodly stuff.

Some minor bug fixes too, moving Floatbox just that much closer to perfection.

Yikes!!!

There was a bone-head error in v4.11 which could cause it to crash in a gallery set that has captions coming from a hidden div. If you're wanting to use caption:#id, please upgrade.

Apologies for the inconvenience.