There are a large number of pop-up/dialog box libraries that are now available. Many of the pop-up dialog options out there support the same features. However, in our testing we found that some failed terribly.

As part of this post, I'd like to cover a quick comparison of what I found in hopes that it will help others in their search for the ideal pop-up library.

The popup controls I tested:

jQueryUI Dialog

DOM Window

Thickbox

fancybox

Colorbox

Shadowbox.js

At a first glance all of the above looked like they would work well. However we did find some major flaws with the above libraries. Here is what we found:

jQueryUI Dialog - This is by far our favorite pop-up dialog. It supports features such as modal, dragging it to other locations on the screen and allows the user to resize it. The features that jQuery offers makes it a top choice. However, the major flaw is it makes IE6 hang for about 10 seconds when the page is loading. That one flaw forced us to look at other options.

Dom window - For us this package is too basic. It does support the basic needs of a pop-up but when compared to some of the other libraries it was not nearly as good.

Thickbox - This library had all the features needed. We have used it in the past and have found it very easy to work with. The major pitfall with this library is it is no longer supported. The library works correctly today but there is no guarantee it will continue to work into the future and therefore is not a great choice.

FancyBox - This library has a good set of features unfortunately it loads very slowly in IE6 and can cause the browser to crash.

ColorBox - This library works very well, supports a good amount of features and does load correctly in all browsers including IE6. It would be nice if this library had all of the features of the jQueryUI Dialog and some may consider it a flaw that jQuery is required in order to use this library.

ShadowBox - This library works well in all of the major browsers and supports most features that are necessary for a nice pop-up. It does not have all of the features of jQueryUI Dialog. This library includes everything needed in one javascript and css file.

Based on my research I found the two best libraries to be colorbox and shadowbox.

These libraries offer very similar features and they both work well with all of the major browsers. For us ColorBox was the right choice because it has is under an MIT license, the size of the library is smaller than ShadowBox and it supports auto-resize-to-fit-content which ShadowBox didn't have.

I have been looking for some good options for pop ups. I was using colorbox but have not been able to get some important problems solved even at the google group.

I just discovered jQuery Tools Overlay. It seems flexible and lightweight. http://flowplayer.org/tools/overlay/index.html

shadowbox supports auto-resizing, addition of the new library is quite low.

Thanks for providing a great and concise review. Saved us lots of time!