Download lightbox and place the lightbox directory inside /themes/theme-name/common/ directory.
now open the /themes/theme-name/common/header.php in an editor and add the following code before

<!-- Start Lightbox includes -->
<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="<?php echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/css/lightbox.css" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/js/prototype.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/js/scriptaculous.js?load=effects,builder"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="<?php echo WEB_ROOT;?>/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/js/lightbox.js"></script>
<!-- End Lightbox includes -->

Now the ground work is done and it’s time to add the lightbox functionality to the item show page. Open the Now Show.php page located in /themes/theme-name/items/ and replace the following code

<!-- The following returns all of the files associated with an item. -->
<div id="itemfiles" class="element">
	<h3>Files</h3>
	<div class="element-text"><?php echo display_files_for_item(); ?></div>
</div>

with the code below

<!-- The following returns all of the files associated with an item. -->
<div id="itemfiles" class="side-element">
	<h3>Files</h3>
	<div class="element-img">
		<!-- Create the image thumbnail with a Lightbox link -->
		<?php
		$item = get_current_item();
		$files = $item->getFiles();
		foreach($files as $file) {
			echo '<a href="' . file_download_uri($file) . '"rel="lightbox" title="'.item('Dublin Core', 'Title').'" class="download-file">';
			echo item_thumbnail();
			echo '</a>';
		}
		?>
	</div>
</div>

I developed this code to an Omeka system which is been used exclusivly for images, but if you have other artifacts such as PDFs then place a simple check like given below.

<!-- The following returns all of the files associated with an item. -->
<div id="itemfiles" class="side-element">
	<h3>Files</h3>
	<div class="element-img">
		<!-- Create the image thumbnail with a Lightbox link -->
		<?php
		if (item_has_thumbnail()) {
			$item = get_current_item();
			$files = $item->getFiles();
			foreach($files as $file) {
				echo '<a href="' . file_download_uri($file) . '"rel="lightbox" title="'.item('Dublin Core', 'Title').'" class="download-file">';
				echo item_thumbnail();
				echo '</a>';
			}
		}
		else{
			echo display_files_for_item();
		}
		?>
	</div>
</div>

Now test it out and see. If the loading image and close button is not appering it might be due to relative path in lightbox not working. To fix it open the /themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/js/lightbox.js and locate the following piece of code around line 50.

fileLoadingImage:        'images/loading.gif',
fileBottomNavCloseImage: 'images/closelabel.gif',

Now replace it with the following.

fileLoadingImage:        '/omeka/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/images/loading.gif',
fileBottomNavCloseImage: '/omeka/themes/theme-name/common/lightbox/images/closelabel.gif',

I tested this code with Omeka 1.1 and Lightbox 2.04

We enjoy pointing our readers in the direction of cool software, web sites, and other various tips, but what we really love is writing up detailed how-to guides that walk you step-by-step through how to actually do something. Let’s take a closer look at the most popular how-to Lifehacker features of 2008:

Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone

iPod touch owners looking to get iPhone calling functionality out of their devices flocked to this guide for turning your iPod touch into an iPhone. It’s the kind of thing that could make you decide to forget the iPhone altogether and go with an iPod touch.

Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera

If you’re using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you’ve got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box. With the help of a free, open source project called CHDK, you can get features like RAW shooting mode, live RGB histograms, motion-detection, time-lapse, and even games on your existing camera.

Turn Your $60 Router into a User-Friendly Super-Router with Tomato

Tomato is an open-source router firmware that adds advanced functionality to your old $60 router. What’s not to love? It’s free, it will often work on the router you already own, and it’s easy to use. For an alternative, check out how we turned your $60 router into a $600 router with DD-WRT even further back.

Jailbreak iPhone 2.0 with PwnageTool

When the iPhone and iPod touch 2.0 software update hit devices this summer, users were thrilled that they could enjoy Apple-approved third-party apps on their hardware—but that doesn't mean they don't want to have their cake and eat it, too. Our guide to jailbreaking your iPhone running 2.0 software walks you through how to jailbreak your device and install unsanctioned third-party apps worth jailbreaking for.

Jailbreak Any iPhone or iPod Touch in 45 Seconds

Before the release of the iPhone 2.0 software update and the PwnageTool, you still had your jailbreak needs. This guide walked you through how to jailbreak any pre-2.0 iPhone or iPod touch in a mere 45 seconds.

Slipstream Service Pack 3 into Your Windows XP Installation CD

When you wipe your PC’s hard drive clean and reinstall Windows with that old installation disc, you don’t want to connect your fresh, unpatched and vulnerable system to the internet only to download 176 new updates from Microsoft. This guide showed you how to slipstream the latest Windows Service Pack 3 into your XP install disc so your fresh installation of Windows is also sporting the latest and greatest updates from Microsoft.

Trim Down Windows to the Bare Essentials

When you’re installing Windows in a virtual machine or on old, slow hardware, you want the leanest, meanest and fastest-running configuration possible. This how-to guide walks you through how to create a slim, trim, and lightning fast version of Windows.

Get Vista’s Best Features in XP

Got a lust for Vista goodies but not for—well, the rest of Vista? This walkthrough will show you how to get Vista’s best features in XP.

Hack Your Wii for Homebrew Apps and DVD Playback

Despite the fact that it ships with a DVD drive, for whatever godforsaken reason, the Nintendo Wii doesn’t support DVD playback. Not only will be be playing back DVDs after following this guide, but you’ll also be able to run other homebrew applications, games, and even play burned backups—all without any hardware hacking or modchips.

Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster

Commercial DVDs are far too expensive to let scratches turn your video into a glorified coaster, but most people still don’t back up their DVD collection. After following this guide, the ease with which you can rip full DVD backups to your hard drive will leave you with no excuse not to.

Protect Your Privacy When Downloading

Whether you’re downloading copyrighted material or not, no one likes to have their activities online monitored. This guide details how to protect your privacy online.

Set Up Push Email, Contacts, and Calendar on Your iPhone for Free

If you don’t feel like shelling out $100 a year to get push email, contacts, and calendar on your iPhone, you can still get it all on your own. You just need to know how.

How to Recover Deleted Files with Free Software

We’ve all been there at some point: You delete an important file, somehow it skips your Recycle Bin altogether, and for all practical purposes, it’s disappeared into the ether. Before you hit the big red panic button, this guide will walk you through how to recover deleted files from your hard drive with free software.

Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux

You may love the Linux life, but there are those annoying times when—for whatever reason—it'd be nice to fire up a Windows app. With a little know-how, you can run Windows apps seamlessly inside Linux.

Master Your Digital Media with VLC

VLC is far and away the most popular desktop media player among Lifehacker readers, and for good reason. Not only does VLC play nearly any file you throw at it, but it can also rip DVDs, convert videos for your iPod or iPhone, and much more. Photo by R’eyes.

Copy Music from Your iPhone or iPod to Your Computer for Free

You may not need to do it every day, but it seems like everyone needs to pull music from an iPod or iPhone to their computer at some time or another. This handy little guide details how to copy music from your iPhone or iPod to your computer for free.

Got a favorite Lifehacker guide on or off this list that we covered in ’08? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

• Windows freeware app LaptopLock integrates with the LaptopLock web site to bring added file security, stolen notifications, and tracking of your stolen laptop. LaptopLock isn’t much of an alarm system, but you may be glad you installed it if your laptop is ever stolen.
• Turn your motion-sensing MacBook into an FTP-backed-up security camera using MacBook alarm system iAlertU (original post).
• Turn your Windows laptop-with-webcam into a motion-sensing security camera with freeware application Yawcam (original post).
• Windows-only Laptop Alarm (original post) locks your computer and monitors for suspicious behavior, sounding an alarm if someone tries using or unplugging your computer, for example.

If you've got a good set of methods for protecting your laptop from thieves—both before and after a theft has taken place—let's hear about it in the comments.

Stabilize Your Camera

Foremost, when photographing fireworks, stability is key. Like butterflies and lightening strikes, fireworks are fickle subjects. An absolutely stable shooting platform is a must. Whether you use a full fledged tripod or you clamp the camera onto a solid fence with a mount, the camera must be steady. Leaning against a tree or trying to grip the camera on the top of a post just won’t cut it. You can further increase the stability of your tripod by hanging weight from the cross brace. Without a stable platform to shoot from you are nearly guaranteed blurry photos. Photo by matter=energy.

Shoot Hands-Free

Right behind stabilizing the camera with a tripod or mount is keeping your hands off the camera while shooting. The most common way to go hands-free is a shutter release cable. Many modern digital cameras have the ability to get triggered by an infrared remote. If you have neither, check the manual of your camera to see if you set a shutter delay. Setting a delay on the shutter will achieve the same vibration-reducing effect as a remote release, but unfortunately it gives you less control over the timing of the exposure since you have to predict the best time to shoot by a few seconds. A cable or remote release is ideal.

Control Your Exposure

The length of the exposure is pivotal to capturing fireworks. Fireworks are large bright distant light sources that “bloom” over the course of several seconds. To capture the the full effect of the firework’s burst it is necessary to use a longer exposure. One to four seconds is usually enough to capture the most beautiful moment of the bursts. Shorter than that and you end up with dark partial bursts, longer and you often end up with an over exposed picture without much focal interest. Photo by mandj98.

Location, Location, Location

Firework displays draw large crowds, so it isn’t always possible to secure a perfect location to shoot from. Arriving early and scoping out the scene is well worth your time. You want to have as clean and unobstructed a view of the skyline as possible. Make sure to reference the skyline through the viewfinder of the camera to make sure you and the camera are seeing things the same way. Shooting from much higher or lower than the rest of the people watching the show can yield interesting results. If possible select a location that is upwind of the fireworks display. Fireworks generate enormous amounts of smoke and if you’re upwind your pictures will have a hazy quality like you were taking them through a fogged up window. The picture at left highlights the effect smoke can have on fireworks photography. Photo by ahisgett.

Don’t Flash The Fireworks

Turn off your flash. If you can’t turn off the flash, black it out with electrical tape. If you’ve ever seen photographs taken from the 78th row at a rock concert with the flash left on, you know exactly how poorly low light long distance flash exposures turn out. If your camera doesn’t have a manual mode that allows you to turn off the flash, try out Landscape mode which almost universally turns off the flash to avoid washing out the foreground in landscape photography. The only exception to the no flash rule is when you want to expose the foreground to highlight objects or people. In the photo above, the young women in the corner are properly exposed because of a flash. Without the flash they would have been dark blurs against the background. Photo by Jon Åslund.

Focus On Infinity

Pre-focus the camera. Don’t let an overzealous auto-focusing system ruin good shots; the brightness of the fireworks and the haze of the smoke confuses many auto focus systems. Set the focus manually on the infinity setting to guarantee that the fireworks bursting on the skyline will be in focus. The only time the focus-to-infinity trick wouldn’t work is if you were close enough to the fireworks explosion to have bigger problems to worry about than blurry pictures! If your camera doesn’t allow manual focus, set it to landscape mode which will have the same effect. Photo by Shermeee.

Cut Out Noise By Controlling ISO

You don’t want the nice crisp black skyline to come out looking like a pixelated camera phone picture. If your camera allows you to do so, set the ISO setting as low as you can. Turn it off auto and set it to 50 or 100 if possible. Left to chance, your camera may well try to shoot the fireworks at 200, 400, or higher. Lower ISO, less noise.

Handy Odds And Ends

Have a small light handy for checking and altering settings on the camera and tripod without having to fumble in the dark. A small red LED key chain flashlight is perfect for this task. Red light is less disruptive to your night vision than white light.

Once you’ve covered the basics of using a tripod, setting your exposure, and so forth the next best thing you can do to ensure capturing that magic moment is to shoot tons and tons of pictures. Make sure your memory cards are cleaned off and ready to go. Remember not to get too carried away early in the event, the grand finale of every fireworks show always yields large and colorful displays. Photo by sfmine79.

With the following tips under your belt, snapping some frame worthy fireworks photos should be no problem at all. If you have more tips to help your fellow readers make the most of their fireworks photography, share them in the comments below.

We’re going to focus on Vista’s small and large features that are missing from XP, separated into three categories: applications, functional, and aesthetic (e.g., transparency is aesthetic, the new start menu search is functional). This list is not exhaustive, but it does cover the features readers feel make Vista worth it.

Bring Vista’s Best New and Improved Apps to XP

First, aside from some of the small operating system improvements we’ll go into below, Vista also bundles up a few new and improved applications worth mentioning.

A Better Explorer: Windows Explorer is one of the most improved applications in Vista, thanks to added features like breadcrumb navigation, better file previews, and more. There are a few add-ons that add some of these better functional adjustments to Explorer, but in general XP users might want to consider replacing XP’s Explorer altogether with something like Xplorer2 (original post) or significantly beefing it up with a tool like QT TabBar (original post). You can also get that saucy breadcrumb navigation alone with Explorer Breadcrumbs (original post).

Encrypt Your Hard Drive: Some versions of Vista—toward the Ultimate end of the scale—come with a new drive encryption software called BitLocker built in. If you’re keen on security and encryption but you want to stick with XP, check out the free, open source TrueCrypt (original post). If you need a little help getting started, check out our guide to encrypting data with TrueCrypt.

Take Quick and Easy Screenshots: PrtScrn has been around forever, but it’s never been the most user-friendly way to get a screenshot. In Vista, Microsoft threw in a screenshot utility called the Snipping Tool. Fact is, if better screenshots are important to you, there are gobs of excellent free screenshot apps available for XP like Screenshot Captor (original post), Clip2Net (original post), and Jing (original post), among many others.

Bring Vista’s Best Functional Features to XP

Task-Switching à la Flip 3D: Vista’s Flip 3D is like Alt-Tab on steroids, displaying full previews of each window as you move through it. To a large extent it’s eye candy, but it can also be really useful in finding the right window when you’re switching from your keyboard. Freeware applications like Shock Aero 3D (original post) and WinFlip bring the same 3D shuffling (and then some, in the case of WinFlip) to to your XP desktop.

Integrated Start Menu Search and Launch: Dubbed Instant Search by Microsoft, this new feature adds a search box to the Windows Start menu for quick searching and launching of documents and applications. If you want to port this same functionality to XP, you can do so with apps like ViStart (original post) or Vista Start Menu (original post)—an extraordinarily beefed up version of the Windows Start menu. Then again, if you're not stuck on the notion of a search-and-launch box built directly into the Start menu, you can't go wrong with Launchy or Google Desktop Search.

Replace the Windows Sidebar: Third-party tools similar to Windows Sidebar and Gadgets pre-dated Vista, so you can trade in desktop real estate for the same functionality with SideSlide (original post) or the Google Desktop Sidebar.

Live Thumbnail Previews of Files: Vista does a nice job of providing thumbnail previews to most image files and even text files, and while XP does have similar functionality, it’s not as advanced as Vista’s. Freeware application Xentient Thumbnails (original post) creates live thumbnails for virtually all images, and if you want a more intimate look at the innards of text and other files without opening them, check out InfoTag Magic (original post).

Speed Up Your System with a Thumb Drive: Windows ReadyBoost speeds up your performance by using a USB thumb drive as system memory, and while nothing beats an actual RAM upgrade, XP users can check out eBoostr (original post) to bring the same functionality to XP.

Streamline Your File Renaming: Microsoft got smart in Vista and changed the behavior when you hit F2 to rename a file, selecting only the name of the file and leaving the extension alone. For a very simple integration of this feature into XP, check out the Better Rename utility. Alternately, if you feel like adding this feature and beefing up Windows Explorer on top of that, you can get the same renaming behavior in Xplorer2 (original post) or QT TabBar (original post).

Taskbar Window Previews: If you like how Vista offers handy little thumbnail previews of windows when you hover over their taskbar item, freeware application Visual Tooltip (original post) brings the same goods to XP.

Give XP that Vista Look

Ultimately, despite all the little feature improvements Vista can throw your way, a new operating system's biggest selling point is often the eye candy—in Vista's case, Aero. There are a lot of tools available that can help you theme XP to look more like Vista, though often users of such applications see mixed results, so proceed at your own risk.

Probably the most comprehensive XP-to-Vista tweaker is the Vista Transformation Pack, which transforms everything from the Start menu and Control Panel to icons.

For a less full-on approach, you could try out skinning utility Uxtheme Patcher with one of several themes from art web site deviantART (like this one or this one) to make XP look and feel more like Vista.

Isn’t There More to It Than That?

There are surely some under-the-hood changes in Vista that you won't get from these simple upgrades, but let's be honest: You care about the features, not the underlying code. And since you can get most of Vista's new features from the comfort of XP—and you can stick to XP as a quick, resource-light alternative to Vista—it looks like most of you won’t be changing horses anytime soon.

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who really only likes XP for its snazzy Media Center improvements. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.