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Building Interactive Galleries with SpotlightPicView

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Why migrate?

  • Modern features: SpotlightPicView supports touch gestures, smooth hardware-accelerated animations, and lazy-loading out of the box.
  • Smaller bundle / modular imports: You can import just the features you need.
  • Better accessibility defaults: Improved keyboard navigation and ARIA handling.
  • Active maintenance: Newer components, bug fixes, and broader browser support.

Plan the migration

  1. Inventory usage

    • Search your repo for Lightbox usage (common keywords: “lightbox”, “lightbox.js”, Lightbox constructor names, markup classes like data-lightbox, or CSS selectors).
    • Note locations: galleries, single-image pages, modal photo viewers, third-party integrations.
    • Record customizations: overrides, CSS tweaks, event listeners, analytics hooks.

  2. Define success criteria

    • Feature parity list: open/close, next/prev, captions, thumbnails, zoom, fullscreen, swipe, keyboard, deep-linking, gallery indices.
    • Performance targets: time-to-interactive, bundle size change budget.
    • Accessibility targets: screen reader phrases, focus trap behavior, tab order.

  3. Create a fallback plan

    • Keep Lightbox available behind a feature flag or branch until migration is verified.
    • Prepare quick rollback steps: revert npm/yarn changes and swap initialization calls.

Install SpotlightPicView

Install via npm or include the CDN script depending on your project.

Example (npm):

npm install spotlight-picview

CDN (for simple static sites):

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.example.com/spotlight-picview/spotlight.min.css"> <script src="https://cdn.example.com/spotlight-picview/spotlight.min.js"></script>

Load only what you need (if the package supports modular imports). In modern bundlers you might do:

import { Spotlight, LightboxController } from 'spotlight-picview'; import 'spotlight-picview/styles.css';

Replace markup (HTML)

Lightbox typically uses anchor tags with a data-lightbox attribute. SpotlightPicView may use a different data attribute or JS initialization. Convert the markup while keeping semantics.

Lightbox example:

<a href="/images/photo1-large.jpg" data-lightbox="gallery1" data-title="Caption 1">   <img src="/images/photo1-thumb.jpg" alt="Description of image 1"> </a>

SpotlightPicView example:

<a href="/images/photo1-large.jpg" data-spotlight="gallery1" data-caption="Caption 1">   <img src="/images/photo1-thumb.jpg" alt="Description of image 1"> </a>

If you have many pages, create a small migration script to replace attributes automatically.

Initialize SpotlightPicView

Spotlight typically requires an initialization call. For basic gallery initialization:

Vanilla JS:

document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {   const galleries = document.querySelectorAll('[data-spotlight]');   galleries.forEach(link => {     // library-specific initialization     Spotlight.bind(link, { preload: true, animation: 'fade' });   }); });

Frameworks (React example)

  • Wrap gallery markup in a component and initialize inside useEffect, cleaning up on unmount.
import { useEffect } from 'react'; import Spotlight from 'spotlight-picview'; function Gallery({ selector }) {   useEffect(() => {     const nodes = document.querySelectorAll(selector);     const instances = Array.from(nodes).map(n => Spotlight.bind(n));     return () => instances.forEach(i => i.destroy());   }, [selector]);   return <div className="gallery">/* thumbnails */</div>; }

Map Lightbox features to SpotlightPicView

Create a checklist and implement equivalents.

  • Opening / closing

    • Lightbox: auto-handled by data attributes.
    • SpotlightPicView: ensure links have href to full image and proper data-attributes or initialization.

  • Navigation (next/prev)

    • Ensure gallery grouping attribute (e.g., data-spotlight="gallery1") is consistent across images.

  • Captions

    • Map data-title → data-caption (or use JS to read existing attributes and pass to Spotlight).

  • Thumbnails / preview

    • Keep <img> thumbnails as-is; ensure alt text remains accurate.

  • Zoom & fullscreen

    • If SpotlightPicView has plugins/modules, import/enable them.

  • Deep linking / permalinks

    • If your app used hashed URLs for deep links, replicate by listening to Spotlight open events and updating location.hash, and on load open the right image when a hash exists.

  • Analytics hooks

    • Reattach tracking by listening to Spotlight events (open, close, slidechange) and firing analytics calls.

Preserve accessibility

  1. ARIA & focus

    • Ensure Spotlight traps focus inside the modal when open and returns focus to the triggering element on close.
    • Verify roles: modal should have role=“dialog” and aria-modal=“true”.

  2. Keyboard navigation

    • Test Tab, Shift+Tab, Escape, Arrow keys, Home/End behaviors. If missing, add key handlers via Spotlight hooks.

  3. Screen reader text

    • Use visually hidden elements for contextual instructions (e.g., “Use left and right arrow keys to navigate”) if Spotlight doesn’t expose them.

  4. Alt text

    • Do not remove or alter alt attributes. Use them for the gallery item descriptions.

Port custom styles

Lightbox customizations often rest on CSS selectors. Inspect the Lightbox CSS rules you relied on (e.g., .lb-close, .lb-caption) and map them to SpotlightPicView classes (e.g., .spv-close, .spv-caption). Copy refactored rules into your theme stylesheet and test in multiple breakpoints.

Example mapping table:

Lightbox selector SpotlightPicView selector
.lb-close .spv-close
.lb-caption .spv-caption
.lb-overlay .spv-overlay

Adjust animation durations or transform origins if layout shifts occur.

Lazy-loading & performance

  • Use native lazy-loading on thumbnails: 
    
<img src="thumb.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="...">
  • Enable Spotlight’s own preload/lazy options (e.g., preload next image only).
  • Tree-shake unused modules and import only needed plugins.
  • Analyze bundle size difference (before/after) with source-map-explorer or similar. If the new library increases size beyond budget, consider code-splitting the gallery and loading Spotlight only when a gallery enters viewport or on first interaction.

Test thoroughly

Create a checklist and run manual + automated tests.

Manual:

  • Open/close, next/prev, captions, thumbnails, zoom, fullscreen
  • Mobile: touch swipe, pinch-to-zoom
  • Keyboard: tab order, escape to close, arrow navigation
  • Screen readers: VoiceOver, NVDA, TalkBack
  • Performance: initial load, first interaction delay

Automated:

  • End-to-end tests (Cypress/Puppeteer) that open a gallery, navigate images, assert captions and hash changes.
  • Unit tests for any custom glue code (analytics hooks, deep-link handling).

Rollout strategy

  1. Feature-flagged release

    • Flip the flag for a small % of users or internal testers first.

  2. Monitor

    • Track errors, performance metrics, and analytics events to compare against Lightbox.

  3. Collect feedback

    • Provide a quick feedback channel in the UI for regressions (e.g., “Report gallery issue”).

  4. Full release

    • Remove Lightbox dependencies and deprecated CSS once stable.

Troubleshooting common issues

  • Images don’t open
    • Check that links point to full-size images and Spotlight is bound correctly.
  • Captions missing
    • Ensure data attributes map or pass captions via JS during initialization.
  • Focus not returning
    • Ensure your initialization stores the trigger element and calls focus() on close.
  • Swipe not working on mobile
    • Confirm touch module is enabled and no touch-intercepting overlays exist.

Example migration script (Node.js)

This simple script updates attributes in HTML files from data-lightbox → data-spotlight and data-title → data-caption (basic regex; backup files first).

const fs = require('fs'); const path = require('path'); function migrateFile(filePath) {   let html = fs.readFileSync(filePath, 'utf8');   html = html.replace(/data-lightbox=/g, 'data-spotlight=');   html = html.replace(/data-title=/g, 'data-caption=');   fs.writeFileSync(filePath + '.bak', fs.readFileSync(filePath, 'utf8'));   fs.writeFileSync(filePath, html, 'utf8'); } function walk(dir) {   fs.readdirSync(dir).forEach(f => {     const full = path.join(dir, f);     if (fs.statSync(full).isDirectory()) walk(full);     else if (full.endsWith('.html')) migrateFile(full);   }); } walk('./public'); console.log('Migration complete (check .bak files).');

Final checklist

  • [ ] Inventory all Lightbox usages and custom code
  • [ ] Install SpotlightPicView and confirm build passes
  • [ ] Convert markup attributes and initialize galleries
  • [ ] Map features and reimplement missing ones (deep-linking, analytics)
  • [ ] Port custom CSS and adjust animations
  • [ ] Verify accessibility and screen-reader behavior
  • [ ] Test on desktop and mobile, automated + manual
  • [ ] Roll out behind feature flag, monitor, then fully release

Switching from Lightbox to SpotlightPicView is mainly an exercise in mapping behaviors, preserving accessibility, and keeping UX consistent while taking advantage of modern features. With careful planning, incremental rollout, and thorough testing, you can migrate smoothly without disrupting users.

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