Website Design Forum

**PhysAssist** · 11-11-2009, 03:49 AM

We are creating biography pages for our employees, I have a general idea of how I want the pages to look. I thought it would be a waste of time to create a new page for each employee. I would like create layers so that when an employees picture is clicked, a semi transparent layer appears with the picture plus a formatted biography paragraph.

What is the best language to use for this type of action? All my pages are php based. Here is a picture of my idea, please critique my photo if this is impossible.

**chrishirst** · 11-11-2009, 03:54 AM

Only language you can use is javascript.

Lightbox 2 (Unless you want to redevelop the entire site in Flash)

**PhysAssist** · 11-11-2009, 03:59 AM

Fair enough, is there a better way to go about something like this? I mean, the layer doesn't need to be transparent, and I don't necessarily need the picture. Just thought it would look better.

**chrishirst** · 11-11-2009, 04:14 AM

Implementing lighbox (or one of the variants) would do what it sounds like you need or you could write some basic javascript to show or hide high z-index absolute elements with or without opacity.

All you need is to create a single page with all the information in then use JS to show the element the user clicks on.

self promo link -> http://www.modtalk.co.uk/article/dhtml-tabs/

**PhysAssist** · 11-11-2009, 05:05 AM

I have the boxes to link up properly, but it seems that the only way to insert text into the page is through the title="text" property

Is there another way of inputting text? I am not yet a pro on reading .js files

Thanks again

**chrishirst** · 11-11-2009, 05:10 AM

Quote:

into the page is through the title="text" property

Explain please?

**PhysAssist** · 11-11-2009, 05:28 AM

Code:

<a href="images/image-1.jpg" rel="lytebox" title="Image Description">Image #1</a>

Thats the basic syntax from the lytebox page. I haven't found any documentation on all the optional properties, which is why I ask

**chrishirst** · 11-11-2009, 05:58 AM

Ok, so you want to put more than captions to whatever you are showing.

Though if it is only a paragraph of text, the title attribute (while not being ideal because of accessibility issues) would be the place to put it.

**LadynRed** · 03:27 PM

You might want to look into Greybox, you can put ANYTHING into a Greybox modal window.
There are similar jQuery solutions:

http://fancybox.net/

http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/