I’ve found this plugin for older versions of cakephp, which allows you to open a popup containing an element: https://github.com/webtechnick/CakePHP-Popup-Plugin
I couldn’t get it to work in Cake 2.x (perhaps it’s possible but I just couldn’t figure it out). Is there any other alternative to doing this?
After spending a lot of time searching I came to the conclusion that using a javascript addon, for example “lightbox” or “clearbox” (I use the latter), is the easiest and more estetic way to go. Now I can display both pictures and HTML as a kind of popup, but still as part of the same page. I haven’t managed to open elements this way, but I can open links to views, and at the moment I can live with that.