Are pop-ups dead?

I couldn't sleep last night. I lay in bed, my overworked mind heating up my pillow. (I really need to buy a chillow. I know, I know... I'm such a nerd.) Here's the conundrum... how to showcase my work on a one page portfolio website in a world where pop-ups are blocked due to malware risks and flash scripts are disabled because they slow bandwidth. Surely there's some sort of acceptable technology I can use to make my pop-ups accessible.

I do have a couple of options. Basically I can hard code the effect using z-index and layers with html and css - or - I can go with JavaScript (jQuery).

• CSS & HTML (z-index and layers) Click here for a sample. Click here for how-to.
• jQuery - such as lightview, lightbox, Prettypoppin, jQuery lightBox plugin or FancyBox

I like the look of the jQuery stuff and, best of all, most of it is free with an optional donation. It looks pretty straightforward so I hope the implementation goes smoothly. More on that later....