This is a quicky.

As plenty know, Lightbox is a convenient and quick solution to providing a slightly glossy gallery effect for a page of photos or artwork. I personally prefer jQuery Lightbox, mainly because I’m a jQuery addict, but there is a slight issue with it being used in sites that have a fixed width on the body element (which I try not to do myself, since who knows what the end-users monitor is going to be like, but for client sites  I don’t always have that freedom).

The issue is illustrated in this example here: the dark-background overlay that appears to cover the page doesn’t go past the margin of the body, leaving distracting bright gutters that ruin the desired effect.

In cases where you need (for whatever reason) a fixed body width, the solution here for jQuery Lightbox is fairly straightforward, but involves a wee bit of modification to the jquery.lightbox.js file’s code.

Inside the file, find the _set_interface() function and look for this segment of code:

            $('#jquery-overlay').css({
                backgroundColor:    settings.overlayBgColor,
                opacity:            settings.overlayOpacity,
                width:                arrPageSizes[0],
                height:                arrPageSizes[1]
            }).fadeIn();

We need to change it to the following:

            $('#jquery-overlay').css({
                backgroundColor: settings.overlayBgColor,
                opacity: settings.overlayOpacity,
                width: $(window).width(),
                height: arrPageSizes[1],
                left: -(($(window).width() - $('body').width()) / 2)
            }).fadeIn();

Why is this? Let’s focus on the changes.

The width has been changed to $(window).width() so it actually gets the width of the browser window, and not just the body element, across all browsers (the provided value only provides the body element width in IE, Webkit, and Opera). Without this, the overlay won’t get wide enough to cover everything up.

The new value, left, gives the css style that will position the overleft to the left side of the screen by subtracting the difference of the browser’s width and the body’s width. This will allow it to work for all browser sizes.

Lastly, we need to put overflow: visible on the body element in our CSS. With this, we can see the overlay when it goes outside the body’s borders.

With these tiny changes in effect, check out the new result here. Much better, isn’t it?