Circular row of scrolling thumbnails have been very popular on the net. It's sleek yet simple. That explains why many web professionals like to use them. However, if you are thinking of a different way to show the caption of the thumbnails instead of the usual way of have it displayed below the images or as a tooltip box, you can try the following tutorial below.

In this tutorial, we will be using jQuery, a popular JavaScript framework combining "jQuery jCarousel" and "jQuery Captify Plugins" together to create a slick and cool way of showing the thumbnails and captions. Thumbnails will be scrollable with previous and next buttons and when rolling over any thumbnail, the caption or the title of the thumbnail will slide up.

First download the latest jQuery version 1.3.2. For the circular scrolling images we will be using jCarousel Lite a super light weight jQuery plugin that carries you on a carousel ride filled with images and HTML content.

As for the pretty image captions or titles that will appear on rollover of the thumbnails, we will be using jQuery Captify plugin, for full details and plugin configuration, you can check out the author site.

Now, let start by including the jQuery framework, jCarousel Lite and jQuery Captify into your HTML file.

<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jcarousellite_1.0.1.pack.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/captify.tiny.js"></script>

After you have included jquery-1.3.2.min.js, jcarousellite_1.0.1.pack.js, captify.tiny.js. Wrap the JavaScript below in a script tag and then place it at the head of your document,

<script type="text/javascript">
    //jCarouselLite
    $(function() {
        $(".slider").jCarouselLite({
        btnNext: ".next",
        btnPrev: ".prev",
        visible: 5
    });
});

//Captify
$(document).ready(function(){
    $('img.captify').captify({
    // all of these options are... optional
    // speed of the mouseover effect
    speedOver: 'fast',
    // speed of the mouseout effect
    speedOut: 'normal',
    // how long to delay the hiding of the caption after mouseout (ms)
    hideDelay: 500,
    // 'fade', 'slide', 'always-on'
    animation: 'slide',
    // text/html to be placed at the beginning of every caption
    prefix: '',
    // opacity of the caption on mouse over
    opacity: '0.7',
    // the name of the CSS class to apply to the caption box
    className: 'caption-bottom',
    // position of the caption (top or bottom)
    position: 'bottom',
    // caption span % of the image
    spanWidth: '100%'
    });
});
</script>

Here are the HTML markup.

<div id="list">
<div class="prev"><img src="images/prev.jpg" alt="prev" /></div>

     <div class="slider">
     <ul>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 1"><img src="images/1.jpg" alt="Title 1" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 2"><img src="images/2.jpg" alt="Title 2" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 3"><img src="images/3.jpg" alt="Title 3" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 4"><img src="images/4.jpg" alt="Title 4" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 5"><img src="images/5.jpg" alt="Title 5" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 6"><img src="images/6.jpg" alt="Title 6" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     <li>
         <a href="#" title="Title 7"><img src="images/7.jpg" alt="Title 7" class="captify" /></a>
     </li>
     </ul>
</div>

<div class="next"><img src="images/next.jpg" alt="next" /></div>
</div>

Here are the style for jQuery jCarousel Lite.

/************************************************
JCAROUSEL LITE
************************************************/
#list {
     height:130px;
     width:880px;
     margin:30px auto;
}

.slider {
     float:left;
     left: -5000px;
     margin:15px;
     position:relative;
     visibility:hidden;
}

.slider ul {
     height:100px;
     width:600px;
}

.slider ul li {
     padding:0 20px;
}

.slider ul li img {
     cursor:pointer;
     height:100px;
     padding-top:3px;
     width:120px;
}

.prev {
     cursor:pointer;
     float:left;
     padding-top:60px;
}

.next {
     cursor:pointer;
     float:right;
     padding-top:60px;
}

And here are the style for jQuery Captify.

/************************************************
CAPTIFY CAPTION
************************************************/
.caption-top, .caption-bottom {
     background: #000000;
     color: #ffffff;
     cursor:default;
     padding:2px;
     font-size:11px;
     text-align:center;
}

.caption-top {
     border-width:0px;
}

.caption-bottom {
     border-width:0px;
}

.caption a, .caption a {
     background:#000;
     border:none;
     text-decoration:none;
     padding:2px;
}

.caption a:hover, .caption a:hover {
     background:#202020;
}

This tutorial has been tested on IE6, IE7, FireFox 3 and Safari 4.

For a clear overview and how it works, you might want to download the files to test it out too. Enjoy!