JavaScript popups are handy to display help information or to zoom in an Image.
There are different types of Popups. The first type is a new browser window opened using the window.open() function. Such types of Popup windows were overused and exploited by many websites during the earlier days of the web. This resulted in the later versions of browsers blocking popup windows. Eventually, popup windows became almost extinct now. Automatically opening popup windows is considered a very bad practice.
Div based popups
Div is a block of content enclosed with the <div> and </div> tags. Unlike the browser window popups, div based popups are less intrusive and are often very useful.
There are a number of ways to use a popup.
Tooltips

Tooltips are useful pieces of information displayed usually on moving the mouse cursor on top of an element.
(like an image or a link). The qTip jQuery plugin is good to show tool tips.
jQuery is a great JavaScript Library. You can learn it here
Here are the steps to create some cool tool tips:
For the elements that you need the tooltip, give a unique id attribute. For this example, we add an id attribute to the hyper link like this:
<a href='#' id='link_example1'>The tooltip Link</a>
Now, add the following code to your page within the <head> and </head> tags:
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jquery.qtip-1.0.0-rc3.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function()
{
$('#link_example1').qtip(
{
content:'A simple tooltip for the link',
style: {name: 'dark', tip: 'topLeft'}
});
});
</script>
The first line adds jQuery to to your page. If you already have jQuery included in your page, no need to add that line.
The second line adds the tooltip library qTip. (You can download the script from here and don’t forget to upload the script to your website )
The line below creates the tooltip:
$('#link_example1').qtip(
{
content:'A simple tooltip for the link',
style: {name: 'dark', tip: 'topLeft'}
});
As you might have noticed, this attaches the tooltip to the element with the unique ID link_example1
See the jQuery tooltip demo here
The qTip jQuery plugin has a huge set of customizable options. See the documentation.
Popup on clicking a link
Colorbox is another good Popup jQuery plugin. The example below shows how to open a modal popup when a link is clicked
First, the link:
<a href='content_help.html' id='link_content' >Help Link</a>
Notice that the link points to ‘content_help.html’ we want to open ‘content_help.html’ in a popup.
Now, the popup code:
Put the code below between <head> and </head> tags of your page.
<link media="screen" rel="stylesheet" href="colorbox.css" />
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jquery.colorbox-min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function()
{
$('#link_content').colorbox({opacity:0.3});
});
</script>
Notice that the ID of the link is link_content.
The code below opens the popup.
$('#link_content').colorbox({opacity:0.3});
You can provide any valid link (like an image ) in he href attribute of the link. The colorbox plugin grabs it and puts it in the popup.
See the Popup demo here
For more options and customization, see the colorbox documentation page
Opening a popup on loading the page
We can use Colorbox plugin to open a popup on loading the page as well.
Here is the code (put it inside <head> and </head> tags of your page ) :
<link media="screen" rel="stylesheet" href="colorbox.css" />
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="jquery.colorbox-min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function()
{
$(window).bind('load',
function(e)
{
$.colorbox({opacity:0.3, href:"offer.html"});
});
});
</script>
The code opens the page “offer.html” in the popup:
$.colorbox({opacity:0.3, href:"offer.html"});
See the popup demo here
Delayed popup
A slight change in the code above can delay the popup for a few seconds.
$(function()
{
$(window).bind('load',
function(e)
{
window.setTimeout(function()
{
$.colorbox({opacity:0.3, href:"offer.html"});
}, /*timeout->*/ 2000);
});
});
You can download the samples here
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
How can I place 2 of the modal-pop up onload scripts on the same page?
i want to create a popup window after registration of form and clicking on submit button
how can you handle with time for this code, I mean to onLoad just after 10 seconds
Hi,
I want to have a Popup Page when a User logins in to a Share Point Page. The POP up page should load after 7-8 seconds after the user hits the page.
@sahana
something like this:
function NAMEOFFUNCTION()
{
setTimeout(“alert(‘YOUR TEXT HERE’),8000)
}
BODY STUFF HERE
hi how to create auto response mail in php
i want to open a pop up when log in fails.. Help please????
i want to open form in popup………..is it possible…….plze hlp me
its helpfull
This isn’t a “pop-up window” it’s an alert. A pop-up window is an HTML page.
That part of the code was just to show event handling. The page on window.open shows opening an HTML page
Hullo,
I need to open a number of pop-ups in a window according to where the users passes its mouse. So I tried entering the window.open directive in the onMouseOver event of the various items but got entangled in the focus issue. If I handle the onMouseOut event by either closing the window or putting it out of focus, the popup starts flickering while the mouse is moved over the item, if on the other hand I dispense of this operation, the focus get stuck to the first opened popup and Ii is needed to click on the bottom window so to trigger the onMouseOver again.
How do I solve this issue?
Thanks,
Fabrizio