Noob question

hi all, i'm new to this forum and fairly new to web design/dev as a whole so, having run into an issue (not one that scuppers my whole site though) i thought i'd ask for a little help:

i've designed a small static site that features an image gallery; on the gallery page there are four albums to choose from; click one and it takes you to a page showing you mini-thumbs of the pix in the album. all perfectly normal

when you click a mini-thumb it opens the larger image in the same window which is fine but i want it to open the image "on" the same page if you know what i mean. same page with the same background and navigation, in the center of the page and not offset top and left.

i can't figure a way to do this beyond creating a sub directory containing yet more static pages that have a composite image on them featuring the expanded image imposed on the background image with some nav inserted. that's a lot of photoshop/dreamweaver jiggery-pokery!

i figure there's an easier way, that it might be possible with some programming but those are currently the dark arts and i'm moving into them veeeerrrrrryyyyy gently


if anyone knows of an elegant(ish) solution i'd be very greatful. my code for it is very straight forward and i'll happily supply it if need be.


regards, jack

Are you looking for Lightbox?
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox/

Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers.

It's pretty easy to use, just attach the required Javascrip/CSS files and use the proper CSS classes... If you need help implementing it, let me know where you get stuck... I've used this in the past, and love it! =)