jQuery Impromptu is an extention to help provide a more pleasant way to spontaneously prompt a user for input. More or less this is a great replacement for an alert, prompt, and confirm. Not only does it replace these but it also allows for creating forms within these controls. This is not intended to be a modal replacement, just a quick tool to prompt user input in a fashionable way.

This is a good plugin to replace alert() and confirm() methods using callback functions. Fully stylabe using CSS. Lots of examples are shown in the site.

Suggested enhancement

Need to support draggable functionality.

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Advantages

• Nice animation effect
• Customizable
• Good replacement for alert() and confirm()

For demo and download, please check the links
Open Demo (the language is not English) | Open demo in new window (google translated) | Info & Download

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alert() and confirm() are two javascript functions that you should not use in your web 2.0 sites . The main problem with these are the way those blocks the user from interacting with browser. They are modal in behaviour, that means the user should take an action before he can do anything with browser. He can’t even switch to another tab. Here, we suggest three jQuery plugins to ditch the notorious alert() function.

They are jQuery Modal Dialog, jqModal, jQuery SimpleModal

jQuery Modal Dialog

Unlike many modal scripts (which are coded to show any type of contents along with modal dialog support), this plugin is just made to show messages to the user and a complete replacement for javascript alert() and confirm.

By default it supports 4 types of messages – error, warning, success and prompt. The styles are highly customizable. One feature I liked in this is the built in support for auto close option. It is a very useful feature. For eg: To show a success message for 5 seconds and close the message automatically.

Advantages

• Highly customizable
• Supports error, warning, success and prompt messages
• Auto Close option

For demo and download, please check the links

Open Demo | Open demo in new window | Support page

jqModal

jqModal is a plugin for jQuery to help you display notices, dialogs, and modal windows in a web browser. It is flexible and tiny, akin to a “Swiss Army Knife”, and makes a great base as a general purpose windowing framework.

As the author claims, it is a good script to show messages to the user. It can be used to replace the alert() and confirm() javascript functions.

Advantages

• Highly customizable
• Can show Ajax/Iframe content
• Can replace alert() and confirm()

For demo and download, please check the links

Open Demo | Open demo in new window | Download

SimpleModal

SimpleModal is a lightweight jQuery plugin that provides a simple interface to create a modal dialog.

The goal of SimpleModal is to provide developers with a cross-browser overlay and container that will be populated with data provided.

For demo and download, please check the links

Open Demo | Open demo in new window | Info & Download

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It is a unique jquery plugin to prevent the user from clicking on page elements. For eg:, we may use this script to prevent the repeated clicking on submit button, wait for an Ajax response etc.

Advantages

• Entire page or a single element can be blocked
• Styles can be customized
• Can be used to replace javascript alert() and confirm() functions
• Lots of examples given

For demo and download, please check the links
Open Demo | Open demo in new window | Download

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Unlike many other libraries, multiple images can be opened at the same time. And a user can arrange the images as he wish on the browser. So it is definitly more usable than image gallery script that can show only one image – typical example is lightbox effect (opening the next closes the current).

The animation is also brilliant. Very smooth zooming of images. To open an image, you just need to click and to close, click on it again (Customizable in different ways). If you want to open two images, just click on the required images and those two will be popped up. Opening one image does not close the other.

Advantages:

• Stand alone javascript. Does not need a library.
• The most user friendly way to show images
• Good effects
• Can show HTML, AJAX content or Flash.
• Can open multiple images
• The opened image windows are draggable so that the user can arrange it in anyway. This is very useful if you want to compare two images.
• Creative Commons License – Free for personal use

Disadvantages:

• Not free for commercial sites. Requries a license. It can be purchased for one site or unlimited

The author has given good documentation and examples in his site highslide.com

Another cool site to check out is, http://youflow.finnrudolph.de. The author has successfully combined coverflow, youtube API and highslide to create a good mashup.

Is it the best?

Well, I think it has improved a lot. Using this script you can completely avoid browser popup windows. The ability to show images and non image (html, iframe) contents in a more userfriendly way makes it one of the best script ever made. The only drawback I see is the license. What do you think?

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Shadowbox is a cross-browser, cross-platform, cleanly-coded and fully-documented media viewer application written entirely in JavaScript. Using Shadowbox, website authors can display a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating away from the linking page.

This is a multi purpose pop up functionality like thickbox, graybox etc. Unlike many(for eg: thickbox), it doesn’t depend on a javascript library like jquery or mootools. So it is easier to integrate on any site without worrying dependencies.

Advantages

• XHTML compliant
• Highly configurable
• Can be used to display any media including SWF, Videos, images, sites etc
• Remains focused irrespective of scroll
• GPL Licence – Can be freely used/modified in any site
• Skinnable

Specifications

Open | Open in new window

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