Lightbox ???

[Brightstar]

Hi Everyone,

I want to have custom messages shown as someone lands on the website home page. I have seen some sites that show a black semi-transparent background, with a borderless dialogue box in the centre of the screen, with a custom message and close (X).

I want to use this for messages, such as how we are dealing with the postal strike, or special offers. However, I would only wish to have the message appear once per session, so I assume it would have to involve the use of a cookie?

Is this called a 'lightbox' or something else?

I would be grateful if anyone could point me in the right direction please.

[pinbrook]

whilst i can't answer the q re lightbox/cookies etc i would take a look at your site stats to determine the entry pages for your site, i'd wager only a minority enter via the index page, thus you should consider doing this when someone enters your site regardless of the entry page for it to be effective

[jont]

Best to add a note / banner / image to the page proper - pop-ups and auto loading windows can be blocked automatically so not all will get the message.

[fergusw]

A simple way Steve may be, as you indicated, set a cookie value per session.

Using javascript you could determine the cookie value (i.e. if they have visited the site this session) and show/hide a banner image in a prominent place.

There's a load of tutorials about that cover this kind of thing. Actinic even has cookie javascript code in the actiniccore.js that you could use:
function setCookie(sName, sValue, sExpire)
and
function getCookie(sName)

[Mark H]

You're right with LightBox:

http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

I don't know whether it can be adapted to do what you want, but I would have thought so.