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Javascript: Clicking thumbnails to switch a larger image. Best method?

Answer 1

+1 A:

You should be able to switch images as many times as you wish.

The piece of code you reference replaces the image source of #target, with the href of a link within a #thumbs div. It should work fine.

<img id="target" src="images/main.jpg">

<div id="thumbs">
<a href="images/picture1_big.jpg"><img src="images/picture1_small.jpg"></a>
<a href="images/picture2_big.jpg"><img src="images/picture2_small.jpg"></a>
<a href="images/picture3_big.jpg"><img src="images/picture3_small.jpg"></a>
</div>

Now as far as width and height, I am pretty sure there are some cross-browser compatibility issues with how browsers handle a defined width, but an undefined height, when you swap out the images.

In firefox, the following works. Plain old javascript, no jquery:

<html>

   <head>

     <script type="text/javascript">
         function swap(image) {
             document.getElementById("main").src = image.href;
         }
     </script>

   </head>

   <body>

     <img id="main" src="images/main.jpg" width="50">

     <a href="images/picture1_big.jpg" onclick="swap(this); return false;"><img src="images/picture1_small.jpg"></a>
     <a href="images/picture2_big.jpg" onclick="swap(this); return false;"><img src="images/picture2_small.jpg"></a>
     <a href="images/picture3_big.jpg" onclick="swap(this); return false;"><img src="images/picture3_small.jpg"></a>

   </body>
</html>

Jeff B 2009-10-28 23:46:31

For the undefined height issue, do you think my idea about using a div background-image swap instead would work better? Thank you for the answer! Also, the jQuery doesn't require any "inline" javascript, correct? So that would be its advantage?

McFly88 2009-10-29 00:25:36

Can anyone tell me how to modify the first code to switch a div background-image instead? Would I change the class of the containing div or could I change the background-image directly somehow?

McFly88 2009-10-29 01:31:37

Since jQuery is just repackaged javascript, it essentially does the same thing, except that it is assigning the "onclicks" in the code. I.e. $("#thumbs a").click( function() ... assigns click methods to each 'a' tag in the #thumbs div. You can do this with plain javascript too, by using a getElementById and a getElementByTagName and then iterating though the results and then adding event listeners.

Jeff B 2009-10-29 02:55:28

To change a background image, you would change the line in the function to read:document.getElementById("main").class.backgroundImage = 'url('+image.href+')';This assumes that main is a div and not an img.

Jeff B 2009-10-29 02:56:57

Answer 2

A:

Would there be a way to implement this with multiple "main" images on one page but all with independence, without having to create a new swap instance for each new "main" image?

Dan Eden 2010-04-21 12:47:32

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Javascript: Clicking thumbnails to switch a larger image. Best method?

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