Blow up those thumbnails the fancy way with FancyZoom

If your site uses thumbnail images, but you're still opening a separate tab or a separate window to show the larger version, you need to see this: FancyZoom is a little bit of Javascript used by Cabel Sasser on both his personal site and the Panic website, to zoom images inline. Cabel describes the effect as "Mac-like," which is about as accurate a description as you can get. It feels like it should be part of Safari, but it works just fine in other browsers, too.

FancyZoom is a more compact alternative to other zooming effects you might be familiar with, like Lightbox or That Thing Apple Uses on Apple.com. It can be added to a site using only 2 lines of HTML, and it doesn't require any additional libraries. You can also use FancyZoom on a text link to an image, instead of a thumbnail, which could definitely come in handy for some blog layouts we've seen.

[via JoshSpear]

Tags: cabel sasser, CabelSasser, FancyZoom, images, Javascript, Panic, thumbnails, zoom