jQuery Simple Slider: Unobtrusive Numerical Slider

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.

Setting	Description	Example
data-slider-range	The range representing the start and end of the slider.	data-slider-range="10,1000"
data-slider-step	The interval to move when dragging the slider.	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.	data-slider-snap="true"
data-slider-values	A pre-defined list of values to allow sliding for.	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.	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.	data-slider-theme="volume"
data-slider-highlight	Boolean for if we should highlight the background of the slider as it it dragged.	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) {
  alert("Slider is ready to use");
});

Event	Description
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:

Property	Description
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

Method	Description
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.