jQuery Simple Slider

Instant Demo

Drag the slider above. More demos can be found here.

Overview

Simple Slider is a jQuery plugin which allows your users to select a value from a numerical range by simply dragging a slider.

Features

Configurable without editing any JavaScript
No external dependencies, apart from jQuery
Compact size, only 4kb
Unobtrusive JavaScript, activate using data-slider="true" on any input
Easy to skin/style purely in css, no images required
Slider value goes directly into your input element, for easy use in normal html forms
Supports both pre-defined values and a continous ranges
Supports smooth sliding and snap-to-value sliding
Supports highlighting the slider background when dragging

Screenshots

The slider's default style, as used to select a budget on Bugsnag.

A slider using the volume style.

Installation

Include jQuery and the Simple Slider JavaScript and CSS files on your page, then activate Simple Slider on your text input using the data-slider attribute:

<!-- Include jQuery -->
<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

<!-- Include Simple Slider JavaScript and CSS -->
<script src="yourfiles/simple-slider.js"></script>
<link href="yourfiles/simple-slider.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<!-- Activate Simple Slider on your input -->
<input type="text" data-slider="true">

You can also manually turn any text input into a Simple Slider in JavaScript as follows:

$("#my-input").simpleSlider();

Getting Slider Values

The value the user selects with the slider is immediately available inside the value attribute of the text input you attached the slider to. This means you can include Simple Slider in your HTML forms and the the selected value will automatically be send to your server when the form is submitted.

If you would like to get the slider’s value using javascript, you can register for the slider:changed event:

$("#my-input").bind("slider:changed", function (event, data) {
  // The currently selected value of the slider
  alert(data.value);

  // The value as a ratio of the slider (between 0 and 1)
  alert(data.ratio);
});

Configuration

You can configure Simple Slider by either using data-slider-* unobtrusive javascript settings, or by passing in a configuration object when initializing the plugin manually.

data-slider-range: The range representing the start and end of the slider. Eg. data-slider-range="10,1000"
data-slider-step: The interval to move when dragging the slider. Eg. data-slider-step="100"
data-slider-snap: Setting this to true makes the slider snap to each step when dragging, otherwise dragging will be continuous. Eg. data-slider-snap="true"
data-slider-values: A pre-defined list of values to allow sliding for. Eg. data-slider-values="0,100,500,800,2000"
data-slider-equal-steps: Setting this to true makes the spacing between each always value equal when used with data-slider-values. Eg. data-slider-equal-steps="true"
data-slider-theme: The CSS theme to use when rendering this slider. Setting this value adds a suffix to the CSS class of the slider. Eg. data-slider-theme="volume"
data-slider-highlight: Boolean for if we should highlight the background of the slider as it it dragged. Eg. data-slider-highlight="true"

Events

You can bind to the following jQuery events using bind, for example: $("#my-input").bind("slider:ready", function (event, data) { ... })

slider:ready: Fired when the slider is loaded and attached to your input field.
slider:changed: Fired when the value of your slider changes.

All Simple Slider events pass 2 parameters into your function, event and data. event is a regular jQuery event object. data contains the following properties:

value: The current value of the slider.
ratio: How far, as a percentage, the slider is from start to end (0 - 1).
el: The generated outer HTML element representing the slider.

Methods

selector.simpleSlider("setValue", value);: Sets the value of the slider.
selector.simpleSlider("setRatio", ratio);: Sets the ratio (see above) of the slider.

Reporting Bugs or Feature Requests

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the github issues page for this project here:

https://github.com/loopj/jquery-simple-slider/issues

License

Simple Slider is released under the MIT license.

About the Author

James Smith, British entrepreneur and developer based in San Francisco.

I'm the co-founder of Bugsnag with Simon Maynard, and from 2009 to 2012 I led up the product team as CTO of Heyzap.

James Smith