Blogger Blogspot DARKbox viewer - gone?

Almost a week after Google imposed the javascript-based Darkbox Lightbox viewer on every Blogspot blog, it appears they have finally listened to concerns and plan to disable it (This blog is still suffering with it as I write but these things tend to "roll out").

Update: It appears to have been universally disabled now.

Discussion had been ongoing, non-stop, for five days before Google even announced this imposition. Despite widespread dismay, pleas to remove Darkbox Lightbox and a great deal of discussion about how to disable it, Google announced "your images have never looked so good".

Interestingly, that salutary article did not show submitted comments and, ultimately, the comment facility was disabled.

So what's this all about?

If you had clicked on an image posted prior to March 2010, anytime in the last seven days, on almost any Blogspot blog, this is what you would most likely have seen...

This giant black rectangle with a tiny red rectangle in the centre and a row of dark grey thumbnails at the bottom, is what Google called "Lightbox". No matter how the image used to display prior to last week, Google were telling us that this was a vast improvement and they seemed impervious to suggestions from disgruntled users that their blogs and blogging experiences had been seriously damaged by it.

I'm absolutely certain that a great many bloggers will welcome Lightbox if it is ever re-introduced. Despite it being slow and clunky, people who post lots of album-style pictures might actually see genuine benefit in it. People who post informative blogs, with charts, graphics and narrative images, are unlikely to share that viewpoint, however.

Hopefully any reincarnation will be fully-tested, announced well in advance and, most importantly, made optional and applied on an opt-in basis, not opt-out.