This question was asked before in a Google Group, but never really answered, and the group closed by the ColorBox developer Jack Moore (amazing plugin btw, thanks!).
I want to create REAL multiple instances of a ColorBox lightbox. This in order to be able to open a lightbox instance and then when closing it, only hiding instead of removing it from the dom. I developed a Moodle Activity Module that supports a lightbox option. And in my course page I have multiple instances of the ColorBox lightbox (each containing an iframe). When a student is browsing through a book, or whatever content, in the opened lightbox and he closes it, he later must be able to open it again with the book content in the same position/state as it was when he closed it.
I guess this is not a standard feature, but has someone found a way to do this? To keep the colorbox instance/div and, if it already exists, later just un-hiding it again?