Lightbox type effect to support a HTML/jQuery image map

Question

I haven't used WP extensively before but I'm more experienced in HTML/jQuery and I'm helping a friend with their existing WP blog.

I have designed an interactive map menu using the technique described here: tutorial and demo (essentially each region of the map has it's own image for both selected and non-selected states and an image map and jQuery is used to toggle the selection of each area)

What I want to achieve is to have this pop up in a lightbox style box when you go to the blog homepage, and then the areas selected on the map dictate the categories of posts that are displayed.

I had created this using plain HTML and jQuery (without a lightbox type plugin - just doing the fade manually) but now I need to integrate it with their website - although I imagine I may have to code this completely differently for WP.

So my main questions are:

1. Is there a lightbox type WP plugin that supports all of the content I need (HTML image map and a few other buttons and options)?
2. Would the most appropriate plugin then support the jQuery method I have used from the tutorial above or is there a better way of achieving this?
3. How can I get this to automatically popup for the homepage of the blog?

I hope I've included enough information, if you have any questions just let me know.

Thanks a lot,

Answer 1

I use Easy Fancybox. It has a number of great features that allows for auto-detection of image files, and fancybox allows for HTML or inline, which is what you are looking for.

It also allows for it to automatically popup, just attached the fancybox-auto class