Envira Gallery Blog

Digital Photography Tips, Tutorials and Resources

New Lightbox Released

Last updated on Apr 25, 2018 by Brenda Barron

The wait is over loyal Envira Gallery users. The new update is here! But what does that mean for you? Sit down, buckle up, and we’ll walk you through the new features you can expect.

What Does the new Lightbox Update Hold in Store?

This new Lightbox framework allows for easy loading and better control of Lightbox thumbnails by allowing for a toggle on/off button for your visitors. Giving your visitors more control means providing a better user experience.

The update also offers a better way of handling the styling for Lightbox thumbnails and performance enhancements for loading albums.

Some other notable features include:

  • Distraction free Lightbox view: Close and hide navigation buttons until the visitor hovers over them after the initial Lightbox loading.
  • Mobile optimizedThis latest Lightbox is designed to work beautifully on mobile devices.
  • New Lightbox transitions: More options, more styles for greater customization.

Lightbox transition options

  • Automatic image counter display for albums and galleries: This applies to the Base (Dark) Lightbox theme.

  • Disable all image links with 1-click: No more sorting through every. single. photo.
  • Text-based lightbox now available with shortcode: Easy to setup and implement.
  • Performance enhancements for cropping: Every second shaved from setup time is a win.
  • Ability to set your own cover image for an album without using a gallery image: No more struggling to get a unique image for album covers.

Congratulations to our team are in order for working so hard on this update!

What’s Next?

With this new lightbox now available, you might be wondering what’s next for Envira? In the near future, you can expect a variety of new features and improvements including:

  • Comments addon
  • Improved proofing
  • New themes
  • Easier theme configuration

Are you excited to start playing with these new lightbox features? What feature are you most excited to see? Share your thoughts below! And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep tabs on all of our latest updates and news. 

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Comments

  1. I would like to see two customization features for lightbox:

    Selective border and border colors around images, with no border or color picker. Width would be nice to, but don’t want to push my luck!

    The option to scale down the size of social media share icons. By default they catch the visitor’s eye due to size and vibrant colors before the images themselves.

  2. Please enable the ability to use the WP Rollback plugin. Currently have 41 client sites using the Envira gallery and unwilling to auto update due to the issues from the last update. Please look at this.

    Thanks

  3. I hope this doesn’t break my existing galleries like the last update did. What users want is reliability, extra functionality always comes second.

    scott white

  4. I would like to have much more control over where lightbox captions are placed – for example, I have a customer would would like to have the captions appear to the side of the lightbox images. (This would only apply if the viewer’s screen was large enough. On a moble device, the caption would still have to appear under the image.) And it would be nice to have the CSS selectors for the captions more exposed or documented so that I could style the captions without having to work so hard.

    Also, it would be nice to implement the feature where you click on the gallery and go directly to lightbox view, without having to generate a plug-in yourself.

    Bill Fishman, webmaster for bradrader.net

    1. Hi Bill 🙂 Thanks for the suggestions! We’re always excited to hear about most requested suggestions and features! You can always reach out to support with any suggested features you’d like to see! There’s no guarantees they will be implemented but they will always be reviewed and discussed!

      I’ve suggested these CSS selectors and positions for you.

      As for the click to open the lightbox from a link, we’re working on updating those docs as well. With this release you can now do this with a shortcode. Using something like this: [envira-link id="343"]Link or html[/envira-link]. Just change out the 343 for the gallery ID of your gallery.

      Please feel free to contact support with any other requested features!

  5. how is this update applied? Do you need to re-download envira and install or is it an auto update? Thanks!

      1. Hi 🙂 I apologize for the delay in responding. Nothing you need to do but update the plugin to 1.8.1. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to Support! We’re always here and happy to help! 🙂

  6. I updated to the new album addon yesterday and created 19 new albums with 2 to 4 galleries in each. The improvements in loading speed and display are very impressive. The one problem I have encountered is that captions are not being displayed. I have set the lightbox theme to Captioned with Float position. Captions are an important part of my galleries that give visitor vital information. If I preview the galleries outside of the album the caption appear as expected. I hope you can address this bug soon. Other than that I am thrilled with the much improved lightboxes for albums.

    1. Hi and thanks for reaching out and for the kind comments! 🙂 Would you mind reaching out to support with any concerns about the captions? We’d be happy to look into this for you! 🙂

  7. My images are smaller in the lightbox view although the actual size is larger. Much larger! I have full screen open and suersize enabled. If you disable lightbox you get nice full screen images but NO navigation! Also,it would be nice to have a BULK APPLY to update multiple galleries at one time. Managing galleries (especially after an update where thing break takes a lot of time.

    Why are my images smaller in lightbox.

  8. Important for any lightbox is to keep same functionality as before and just add features instead of taking them away. With 1.8.0 and 1.8.1 the lightbox doesn‘t show pictures in the desired large size anymore. On regular notebook screens they appear in the same size than the thumbnails. Then there is no need for it at all. Even if there is a chance for manual adoption, nobody pays me for changing everything only because Envira Gallery provides an update without testing former functionality

    1. Amen! Envira is rated one of the top web gallery software. If I now need to spend significant time editing each gallery (Envira has no bulk editing capability), I might as well move on to another plugin. Note: If you disable lightbox you get nice full screen images but NO navigation! I wish I could easily return to a previous version.

      1. Hi Alex 🙂

        Did you mean bulk editing the galleries or the gallery images? Using the Select All inside a gallery – you can bulk edit images. Or using the Defaults Addon, you can set all galleries to use the same settings following these docs: http://enviragallery.com/docs/how-to-use-the-bulk-apply-settings/.

        If you would like to suggest any new features for bulk editing, we’d be happy to submit them as feature requests for you! You can always reach out to support to have us submit these.

        Thanks! 🙂

    2. Hi,
      I must also do a fully rollback, because all my Dynamic Galleries doesnt’t work anymore.
      I see this also with a other update before. I have to edit all my Galleries 🙁
      So, I do a full rollback and restore the Plugin from a Backup

  9. As you have asked for comments…. It´s may not possible when you implement a new lightbox that features work the same way as in the past – but there should be a doc at release date where it´s explaind how to adopt the new functions to achieve the same look.
    As already reported: with [envira-link id=”343″]Link or html[/envira-link]
    – manual sorting is gone – images are displayed in filename order
    – captions do not show up
    – if there are special characters in the ALT Text the gallery does not open at all
    – images are smaller….

    With this update nothing works as before – still hoping that these bugs are adressed soon and Envira priorities are not only new features to new clients.
    My Galleries are broken with no way to fix it right – and no way for a roll-back

    Beside that it was for sure the right decission to move forward with Envira – but the issues above should not happen at release and tested before from Envira and not in the field.

    1. Hi Tobias 🙂 I’m very sorry for any trouble! We are investigating a few open tickets. If you would like to reach out to support with any comments or concerns we could provide an update on any open items and document any specific issues you’re currently experiencing. We do strive for excellence and we’re happy to investigate anything you’re currently experiencing!

  10. Hi!
    Do you know if in base I can add the caption below the image? Because if I change to captioned the program add the X for exit up the image and I don’t want it,
    Thank you

    1. Hi Martin 🙂 I apologize, I’m not sure I understand? On the Lightbox tab of the gallery, you can set your caption position based on the Lightbox theme. When using the Base (Dark) or Base (Light) lightbox theme, the caption will always appear at the top. But all others, the caption will appear at the bottom. If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach out to support and we’d be happy to help! 🙂

  11. With others, I await resolution of the “small photos in Lightbox” problem and will be checking often over the weekend.

    1. Hi Grover 🙂

      We’re hoping for a resolution to that to be pushed out by the end of the week. At the latest the beginning of next week! I’m very sorry for any trouble!

  12. For those having problems since the upgrade and need to roll back: if you do not already have a paid backup system in place like VaultPress which allows for a site recovery rather easily, contact your server company as they should have a backup of your site they can replace. I reach out to you because about two weeks ago Envira had an update and it messed my site like nothing I ever saw before. I was able to restore it through my backup system. I will not be trying this upgrade out until the comments show happy campers.

    1. Hi Darlene 🙂 I’m very sorry for any trouble. If you would like to reach out to support we could assist with any issues you’re currently experiencing if you would like to troubleshoot each issue! 🙂

      1. Thank you Barbi for your kind replies, always. I will be building a site in a few weeks and will start with a fresh copy of Envira to see where we are at. I understand the programmers cannot test the software on all servers, plus different setups (plugins, server types, etc.) can make different reactions. Hoping to see something good!

  13. it would be nice to be able to set lightbox/gallery options for all lightbox/galleries on one page.

    1. Hi Tony 🙂 I can certainly submit this for you as a feature request. There’s no guarantees it will be implemented but it will be reviewed and discussed! 🙂

  14. Hi!! I’m interested if these improvements to the lightbox feature fix the bug where if you use lightbox anywhere else on your website, your lightbox on a particular gallery page will display 3+ of each photo/video? I would freak out (in a good way) if this was solved.

    Thanks!

  15. I have the same image size problem in Lightbox. With it enabled all I can get is the thumnail diplayed in lightbox regardless of image size setting.
    Disabling Lightbox Iget the full size image but no navigation.
    I’m a new install so can’t roll back.
    Really need a fix for this.

    1. Hi Alicia 🙂 I’m sorry for any trouble, we do have an open ticket reviewing the source set on this but there’s no updates on the progress of that ticket at this time. You can open a support request so we can notify you via email once we have any updates (if you haven’t already opened a ticket on this). Thanks

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