I think I've created the simplest and smallest lightbox script so far. [Edit: actually, it's not the smallest, but I still think it's the simplest].

OK, so I doubt the world wide web (or whatever it's called these days) needs another one, but it does just what I want and not a lot more. It uses jquery and works with proper browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) and also IE6 onwards. I haven't tried it with IE5, but I'm not holding my breath.

Try clicking this image to see it in action:


Get the source code here. For further details, have a look here...

I soon found out the problem with my solution to the google image search problem in my previous post. If you just disable javascript for google, you lose maps, etc. Unfortunately, Chromium's content preferences are slightly limited at the moment - you only seem to be able to disable javascript on a site by specfying a top level URL only. That means no limiting to image search results only.

So I decided to bite the bullet and write my first Chromium extension:
http://chrome.google.com/extensions/oogle

I can't be the only person who hates the new google image search.

Firstly, the new image results. OK, they look quite nice, but soon you realise that they've hidden the useful information like the image size and type. That's annoying, but I do quite like the way it loads the images as you scroll down the page.

But the big one for me is the annoying 'lightbox' when you choose an image to visit. Lightboxes are fine when you click on an image for a better look, but why do I need to see one when visiting the page? I've already seen the image out of context in the search results - I don't need to see it again. Why should I need to click the page again? Very irritating.

I'm sure somebody will create a Chromium extension to automatically use the old 'basic' search (which you can choose once you've done your search - but it doesn't seem to remember your choice), but in the meantime, a more brutal approach is to simply disable javascript for google.com (or google.co.uk in my case). It then defaults to the old frames based result view. Who would have thought that would have been preferable?