I'd previously tried "LightWindow" and "Yahoo SpryEffects" but just couldn't get them working properly. But my luck changed today! This morning a friend sent me a link to this page. The art project it describes is hilarious but what also caught my attention was the cool way the images were being zoomed when you clicked on them. So I viewed the source code and discovered something called "FancyZoom.js". A quick Google search lead me to FancyZoom.com
Lo and behold, a fellow in nearby Portland, Oregon had built this really neat JavaScript tool. But would it work in ASP.Net?
As I always do nowadays, I start simple. So I created a standalone page to try it out. He recommends installing the two folders, "images-global" and "js-global", in the root folder. I prefer placing all such 3rd Party code in a separate "JavaScript" folder. Doing so, I had to slightly alter the script links. But other than that, everything worked precisely as his instructions laid out:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Test.aspx.cs" Inherits="Website.Test" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
<title>Untitled Page</title>
<script src="/JavaScript/js-global/FancyZoom.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/JavaScript/js-global/FancyZoomHTML.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body onload="setupZoom()">
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<a href="Images/sunset.jpg"><img src="Images/sunset_thumb.jpg" alt="" /></a>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
I ran the project and ... it worked! Rarely has that ever happened with JavaScript code I've found on the Internet! This first test was in IE7. I then tested it in Firefox 2.0 and the results were equally great.
The next test was to get it working when a Master Page was involved, which is most often the case with my ASP.Net projects. I added the two "script" lines and the modified "body" line to my "main.Master" file. I thought I might have to add a ScriptManagerProxy control to my content page but I did not. It just worked right away!
But there was one last thing to try. I have a commercial website in development which you can check out here. Most of the images on this site are just static ones that never need to be enlarged. And because the images are not hyperlinked, they won't be affected by FancyZoom. So I could have just activate FancyZoom in the Master Page as before and all would have worked fine. But I wanted to see if I could restrict the scope of the JavaScript to just the one page where I need the zoom facility. That page can be found here.
Getting FancyZoom working here was a little more tricky. At the top of the page I added this:
<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/main.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="screensPPC.aspx.cs" Inherits="screensPPC" %>
<%@ Register Assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" Namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" TagPrefix="cc1" %>
<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" Runat="Server">
<asp:ScriptManagerProxy ID="ScriptManagerProxy1" runat="server">
<Scripts>
<asp:ScriptReference Path="../JavaScript/js-global/FancyZoom.js" />
<asp:ScriptReference Path="../JavaScript/js-global/FancyZoomHTML.js" />
</Scripts>
</asp:ScriptManagerProxy>
But where to activate the script? Just below the above code I placed this:
<script type="text/javascript">
setupZoom();
</script>
But it didn't work. I'm not 100% sure why but I think it's because the setupZoom code is being executed before the actual images on the client web page are rendered. So I moved the code to right near the very bottom, as follows:
<script type="text/javascript">
setupZoom();
</script>
</asp:Content>
And ... it worked! By the way, in using FancyZoom I replaced all of this:
<asp:imagebutton id="scrnShot1" runat="server" imageurl="~/Images/Screenshots/desktop1_t.jpg" width="200"></asp:imagebutton></span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"> onmouseover="this.style.border='2px solid blue';" onmouseout="this.style.border='2px solid white';"</span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"> /></span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"> <cc1:modalpopupextender id="modalPopup1" targetcontrolid="scrnShot1" popupcontrolid="panelModal1" backgroundcssclass="modalBackground"></cc1:modalpopupextender></span> <span style="font-family:courier new;"> OkControlID="modalCloseButton1" DropShadow="false" runat="server" />
With just this:
<a href="../Images/Screenshots/desktop1.jpg"><img src="../Images/Screenshots/desktop1_t.jpg" alt="" width="185px" /></a>
Much, much cleaner code!
In summary, I FancyZoom works perfectly in the 3 most likely ASP.Net scenarios. If you need similar functionality in your website then I highly recommend this product!
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