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Our website hosts alot of technical diagrams, graphs, pictures of models, etc. We're currently deliberating whether to lightbox the images or not.

I have asked a handful of users who are typical readers of the content and about 50% of them have said that they would prefer to 'blow up' images so that they can focus on the detail. The other 50% said they dont mind, or hadnt really considered it.

I guess my question is... are there any UX drawbacks to lightboxing single images, by default?

Ultimately, I would like the images to be clear and accessible to users, especially considering that many images will be technical diagrams, equations and such.

Here's an example of the sort of content I am talking about https://www.istructe.org/resources/blog/spheres-of-influence-and-diversity-and-inclusion/

Any thoughts or perspectives would be much appreciated!

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Images don't normally have any other left-click interaction, so there's nothing to lose. This is confirmed by the fact that your users who don't use it had no negative feelings about it, just ignorance. The only question would seem to be whether the cost/benefit analysis justifies your time to implement it right.

Just don't take something away by incidentally disabling hover (title text) or right-click (context menu) actions in your implementation.

You might want to disable it on mobile, where images normally fill the width anyway and where accidental "clicks" are common as one scrolls.

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  • Thank you for your advice. It is much appreciated! Commented Jun 7, 2023 at 10:21

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