Redbox is a very simple lightbox library, which is a way of display a model popup window which may contain any html, while the rest of the page is faded out behind it. There are already many such libraries around for this, but:

• Often they do a little more than I wanted
• Many of them require a large javascript library that isn’t prototype/scriptaculous. While I don’t really have an opinion on which library is better, prototype is generally the one that we’re using for rails, so I wanted a lightbox that took advantage of that, rather than forcing me to include another library which might class.
• Many of them where not compatible with rails’ ajax system. I wanted to be able to do multi-page forms within a lightbox, using form_remote_tag, or any other means of reloading the lightbox div using ajax.

And of course, I wanted it all packaged as a nice rails plugin with handy helpers to use it.

Credits

Much of the design, and some of the javascript and css are shamelessly ripped from the Thickbox library, by Cody Lindley. This library should be considered to be a derivative work of Thickbox, and is also released under the MIT licence.

http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/

Everything else by Craig Ambrose from Tinbox

http://www.craigambrose.com http://www.tinboxsoftware.com