Overlay image in pure CSS

There is no native solution within browsers to display, on click, a full screen image. Several Javascript libraries have come to fill this gap, especially Lightbox.

These solutions are sometimes heavy, whereas if you are only looking for a simple behavior, a few lines of CSS are enough, and no Javascript code is required.

This example, which contains only CSS and no Javascript code (for only 400 bytes, compared to several tens or hundreds of Kb for the above-mentioned libraries) works on all recent browsers. Its simplicity should allow you to configure it as much as you want!

Principle

Target selector

We will use the CSS selector :target, which allows to apply a style to an element when its identifier (id="") is the one of the anchor (#) in the page URL. To take an example:

<a href="#myid">Click to color in red!</a>
<div id="myid">Hello World!</div>

<style>
div:target {
  color: red;
}
</style>

Note that this selector actually allows you to add a lot of interactive elements to a page without Javascript, such as showing and hiding an element or a navigation bar.

Compatibility

The :target selector is supported by all browsers released since 2008, and especially since Internet Explorer 9:

target on developer.mozilla.org

target on caniuse.com

HTML

For each image, the HTML markup will be as simple as possible:

<!-- The link that, when clicked, will display the image in full screen -->
<a href="#img-id">
  <img src="image-thumbnail.png" alt="Thumbnail">
</a>

<!-- The full screen image, hidden by default  -->
<a href="#_" class="overlay" id="img-id">
  <img src="image-fullscreen.png" alt="Fullscreen">
</a>

The first line, customizable at will, will display the image in full screen thanks to the link to #img-id. The second, hidden by default, contains the corresponding identifier.

If several images are present on the page, it will obviously be necessary to give them a unique identifier for each one, and to match the link.

The link to #_ has no particular meaning, and could have been replaced by #anything. It simply aims to cause #img-id to lose the status :target and therefore to close the full screen when clicking.

CSS

Display

The overlay is nothing more than a div with a fixed position, located at the top left and covering the entire page. We add a flex property to it to place the image in the center of it:

.overlay {
  /* Display over the entire page */
  position: fixed;
  z-index: 99;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  background: rgba(0,0,0,0.9);

  /* Horizontal and vertical centering of the image */
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  text-align: center;

  /* We hide all this by default */
  visibility: hidden;
}

.overlay img{
  /* Maximum image size */
  max-width: 90%;
  max-height: 90%;

  /* We keep the ratio of the image */
  width: auto;
  height: auto;
}

Activation on click

As we have seen previously, we now have to add a visibility: visible with the selector :target to display all this when you click on the trigger link.

.overlay:target {
  visibility: visible;
  outline: none;
  cursor: default;
}

We add an outline: none to avoid the border that is displayed, by default, on several browsers. In addition, cursor: default, optional, avoids having a “hand” in place of the cursor on the entire page.

Animation

The Javascript libraries mentioned above allowed to have a nice fade effect when opening. Never mind: CSS allows almost any kind of madness in terms of animation.

We’re going to stay sober here, with a slight bland effect, with a very small zoom effect on the image.

.overlay {
  opacity: 0;
  transition: opacity .3s;
}

.overlay img {
  transform: scale(0.95);
  transition: transform .3s;
}

.overlay:target img {
    transform: scale(1);
}

Full code:

Finally, our CSS code became:

.overlay {
  position: fixed;
  z-index: 99;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  background: rgba(0,0,0,0.9);
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  text-align: center;
  visibility: hidden;
  opacity: 0;
  transition: opacity .3s;
}

.overlay img{
  max-width: 90%;
  max-height: 90%;
  width: auto;
  height: auto;
  transform: scale(0.95);
  transition: transform .3s;
}

.overlay:target {
  visibility: visible;
  outline: none;
  cursor: default;
}

.overlay:target img {
    transform: scale(1);
}

Bonus: shortcode for Hugo

With the static website generator Hugo, you can easily automate the process with a shortcode. To do so, we create a img.html file in layouts/shortcodes/ :

<a href="#{{ anchorize (.Get "src") }}">
  <img src="{{.Get "src" }}" alt="{{.Get "alt" }}" />
</a>
<a href="#_" class="overlay" id="{{ anchorize (.Get "src") }}">
  <img src="{{.Get "src" }}" alt="{{.Get "alt" }}">
</a>
{{ .Inner }}

Then, you just have to add, in your articles:

{{< img src="image.jpg" alt="Description" />}}