Replace ThickBox

[aaron_guitar]

Have you thought about replacing ThickBox? It is no longer under development (as their site says) and it doesn't conform to standard jQuery plugin practices. For example, I'm trying to use it for a plugin of mine and I'm wanting to tie into the "onClose" event for ThickBox which isn't too easily done. I know I could just include one of the other plugins, like colorbox, with my plugin but I think it'd be a great service to other developers if you included a more flexible library.

(I would have assigned this to 3.0+ but the option isn't available.)

[Viper007Bond]

ColorBox appears to be really pretty BTW.

[aaron_guitar]

Really pretty and really customizable.

[edified]

Replying to Viper007Bond:

And with a really helpful developer.
​http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/
​http://groups.google.com/group/colorbox/topics

8304 bytes before it zip/deflate

[caesarsgrunt]

+1 for ColorBox. I'd never met it before, but it looks great.

[scribu]

+1 from me as well.

Offtopic:

Replying to caesarsgrunt:

+1 for ColorBox. I'd never met it before, but it looks great.

"Hello, ColorBox! How are you today?" :P

[jacobsantos]

I've tried all of the so called alternatives and they pretty much all suck. The limitations of jQuery UI Dialog is that you can pretty much only assign one dialog at a time (unless there is a workaround that isn't obvious).

Colorbox is fine if you don't need to fine tune any scripting for the modal box. Say if you want to use any other scripting then the predefined one then you are SOL.

I would rather recommend qTip jQuery plugin instead. It is a tooltip first, but it has modal capabilities as well.

[aaron_guitar]

Replying to jacobsantos:

Colorbox is fine if you don't need to fine tune any scripting for the modal box. Say if you want to use any other scripting then the predefined one then you are SOL.

Could you give a specific example?

[hakre]

Maybe code like this one [12554]

[mrmist]

Version tracks the original report..

[aaroncampbell]

Just started playing with colorbox because of the limitations with thickbox. It's pretty nice. I'm open to other options, but it WOULD be nice to find a replacement.

[alex-ye]

1+ for colorbox .

[nacin]

I want to suggest that I would rather to continue to monkey-patch Thickbox than replace it with another library. Replacing Thickbox means killing popups in core, not making popups prettier. Maybe once we've eliminated TB usage in core, we can shoehorn in a worthy WP-integrated replacement.

[aaroncampbell]

Replying to nacin:

Do you really think that the correct direction is no lightboxes anywhere? That feels like more of a knee-jerk reaction to their overuse and misuse on the web as a whole (and possibly in WordPress as well). I think they have their place. For example, to me it seems like it's always going to be better to browser your media library for something to insert into a post inside a lightbox. It seems like there's just too much content there to shrink that into a small section of the screen.

I'm interested in hearing (or better yet, seeing) the alternatives though.

[nacin]

The best argument for eliminating thickboxes for media handling is that by moving it inline, you can continue to work on your content while images are uploading/crunching. Not to mention drag-and-drop into the editor. See ​http://wpdevel.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/some-media-upload-sketches/. It's going to take some work but it can be possible.

[scribu]

Note that this work has mostly been done already, as a plugin:

​http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/image-pro-wordpress-image-media-management-and-resizing-done-right/

[azaozz]

Replying to nacin:

Agreed. Actually started on a new media library UI couple of months ago. Looks pretty similar to the plugin @scribu linked above. Had some hopes that it would make it in 3.3 but definitely going to try it for 3.4 :)

[SergeyBiryukov]

Closed #19975 as a duplicate.

[maorb]

+1 for colorbox

[wycks]

jQuery UI Dialog is already bundled with the jQuery UI in WordPress.

Benefits:

Already bundled

Actively developed

Lots of options

Integrates well with jQuery and other jQuery UI features.

ps. @jacobsantos it also can support multiple instances.

[MatthewRuddy]

Is this still being looked at? Thickbox is really horrific on mobile devices such as the iPad. Zooming in and out causes major problems. Unable to scroll within iframes on it as well; instead it scrolls the parent window. Doing so also completely destroys the background overlay as well.

The problem with media-upload.js overwriting the tb_position function is a serious pain as well. Makes admin thickbox functionality in the WP Admin for plugin almost impossible if they can't resize it to their needs (provided they need media-upload.js for whatever reasons). It is possible to overwrite the functionality with your own functions loaded after media-upload.js but, it seems ridiculous when the functionality is native but overwritten.

The jQuery UI dialog seems like a good alternative to me. It is already included with Wordpress, and the styling classes can easily be carried over to make it look as it already does.

[dgwyer]

+1 for jQuery UI dialog.

[sc0ttkclark]

This is a major pain point for development for me, can we at least add a new one and keep Thickbox for deprecated use?

[scribu]

Another contender: ​http://jschr.github.com/bootstrap-modal/

Not sure how dependent on Bootstrap it is, but it definitely seems to have all the functionality WP might need.

[dd32]

Another contender: ​​http://jschr.github.com/bootstrap-modal/

Looks decent, but worth noting it's Apache v2 licensed, which isn't GPLv2 compatible.

[ocean90]

Why do we need another modal library? I think we should just make the new media modals more generic so that core and plugins can use them too.

[sc0ttkclark]

I was trying out the new media modal too, was anxious to switch from Thickbox to it but its not in a state to be used cleanly when I last looked. Maybe a new ticket should be used and it's use as a Thickbox replacement be one of the proposed benefits?

[sc0ttkclark]

Update: Confirmed, the new WP 3.5 Media Modal makes an excellent Thickbox killer. It's use as a replacement for Thickbox would require additional helper functions for plugins/themes to hook into, but based on the working code I'm using, this is definitely something viable!

[scribu]

Could you share the code you're currently using, Scott?

[sc0ttkclark]

Will do over the weekend / next week. Still in progress, and heavily tied to the project it's for, ​http://pods.io/

[TobiasBg]

Core is moving to custom implementations with the Media Models/Views, theme browser, etc. and doesn't have a need for another external library at this time.
Thickbox itself is used less frequently and will probably be phased out in Core over time, whenever relevant areas are touched/refactored, in favor of such custom models/views. It needs to stay for backward compatibility though, as plugins might rely on it.
With #26870, efforts are being made to document the Media Models/Views code so that they can be used more easily by plugins.

[sc0ttkclark]

Doesn't sound like we need an external library, the 3.5 Media Modals have been expanded in many ways already in core and core-related projects. It's not difficult to make a Thickbox replacement modal, I just haven't had time to focus on this specifically.

I'd like to see this kept as Future Release, because Thickbox has to be replaced soon, seems modals are the best path forward.

[sc0ttkclark]

Seems like modals can do iframes now, time to revisit IMO.

​https://gist.github.com/pglewis/0382203399251e6914d5

Here's some example code from @pglewis which shows how iframes can be created using the WP Media Modal, code that's already in WordPress. Since this replacement takes little code, I think it's pretty viable and could be used for links that would normally open up a Thickbox in WP core.

[sc0ttkclark]

Based on code from Phil, it could be further modified to make the link dynamic too. But it's a great example of the fact this is definitely possible.

[sc0ttkclark]

Looking at the wp-includes/js/media-views.js it appears that there's some Thickbox overriding going on now, but I'm not sure it's kicking in everywhere it could in a more general way across all WP screens.

[desrosj]

#46985 was marked as a duplicate.

[afercia]

Added the accessibility focus as the duplicate #46985 had it.

[sabernhardt]

We probably will need to keep patching Thickbox for plugins, but these popup links should have a better modal in WordPress core.

I found two core implementations still in use.

• Plugin "View details" links (see also #50554) for plugins within the WP directory, which are on multiple screens: Plugins, Plugin Install, Updates, Import
• Theme "View version x.x details" links, which appear inside the Theme details modal when there is an update available

There is also a 'thickbox' link for setting the featured image in Classic Editor, but that apparently opens the media modal.