First off, the shadowbox.js library is an amazing tool in our arsenal. It’s pretty light weight and adds a really nice touch when displaying images. After reading up on the different usage and options that it supports, I found out that it can easily support any content by utilizing the iframe player built into the runtime. If you want to pop open a nice window to a link, you can use a version of the function below. All this will do is open a 640×480 window with the given URL passed into the function.
Now, one thing I noticed by using this approach was that there was a lag while showing the content after the shadowbox window opened up. I had just built a carousel video player for our JVF homepage and wanted the videos to pop open quickly and start playing fast. So it was bugging me that I could hit the flash player webpage links directly and they would play within 2-3 seconds, however, each time I loaded that same URL into shadowbox it would take 8-10 seconds.
This fix was able to cut our load time in half! Give it a try and see if this helps speed up your own dynamic content. Enjoy!