I've been meaning to search for some mechanism to zoom an image on the current browser page for some time but just finally got around to it today. This is to allow someone to see a bigger version of an image used in a gallery or web page without reloading the whole page, spawning a new page or a pop-up.

One of my first results was HighSlide JS

It does a ton of cool stuff, including text captions, manual slideshow controls (next prev), the ability to move the image around and it can even be used for predominantly text-based content.

I'd like to know if anyone else has any favorite tools to accomplish this type of page manipulation? This one costs $29 for one site or $179 for unlimited sites. Free for non-commercial use though.