Lightview was designed from the ground up to make the overlaying experience as nice as possible. The idea was to have the image be the most important thing while the box is there to present it without interfering with it. That is why the author has created the animated side buttons to make sure the image is always 100% visible. Button around the image will change in opacity, having lighter buttons by default and darker buttons on hover keeps the focus on the image.

Lightview is very easy to style as well, even someone who doesn’t know CSS can be able to customize it. The javascript options and the images are basically all you need to change to get the look and feel you want within seconds. One of the best things is that Lightview uses Canvas an VML to draw a those images for you. This way it’s possible to change the corner radius very fast. It also works on every screen resolution, all images are automatically resized to fit within the viewport when you open them. Even the close button will adjust as you go smaller.

Requirements: Prototype, Scriptaculous with Javascript Enabled
Demo: http://www.nickstakenburg.com/projects/lightview/
License: License Free