Today most WordPress business themes have some kind of jQuery image slider packed into its set of features. Reason is the popularity of the jQuery Slider, Slogan and columns layout seen on the front page of may modern company sites. If not theme users will probably conider if adding a image slider is an option or if the theme is worth it. This means that jQuery image slider plugins can be really useful for WordPress theme developers and web designers who need to add a slider to a theme. Since jQuery is pretty simple to use and WordPress themes themselves are typically not that hard to extend most people with a bit of coding experience can do the theme sugery. However if you are not comfortable with it you may need to opt-in for a WordPress slider plugin. In most cases you can find what you need without having to go into the low level codeing. Besides images some sliders also support other types of content and some even a mix of content and media on different layers. Finding the right jQuery image slider for the job can be a challenge. This article aim to make it easier for you to get started.
NIVO SLIDER
Great and flexible jQuery image slider plugin with awesome transition effects. This plugin have 9 unique transition effects. It is very popular and used a lot by WordPress theme developers building sliders into the themes.
MORE INFO (Free plugin, premium developer packabe available)
LAYERSLIDER (Awesome sliding effects)
MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)
ANYTHINGSLIDER
AnythingSlider is an attempt at bringing together the functionality of all of those previous sliders and adding new features. In other words, to create a really “full featured” slider that could be widely useful.
SALOON jQuery Image Slider
Saloon is a jQuery Banner Rotator which animates your image and text slides with transition effects of the wide library. Easy installation, great transitions and text animations define the freshline style. See the heaps of custom transitions/animations for each object on the page! Customize this slider with just a little HTML and CSS to your very needs. Give each slider a description and more elements to transport your message.
The touch style drag and rool feature if pretty cool.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)
DRAGDEALER
Dragdealer is much more than a simple image slider. It offers a wide variety of features related to dragging, but is also quite powerful for creating different types if image sliders. I recommend you go to the website and try out the demos.
KEN BURNER
Kenburner is the premium way of using a slider in your website. A combination of Ken Burns Effect, state-of-the-art Slider and Text Animations defines this slider.
Customize this slider with just a little HTML and CSS to your very needs. Give each slider some captions to transport your message. Use your Ken Burns Animated banner elements with the possibility of playing YouTube and Vimeo clips in a special detail view with describing text.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)
AVIASLIDER
Very feature rich and good looking image slider. 8 unique transition effects
PANNING SLIDESHOW
This slideshow has the ability to showcase imagery automatically. This is a twist from classic slideshows which uses a kind of transition to animate between slides.
ESTRO JQUERY EFFECT SLIDER
This jQuery image slider plugin uses unobstrusive javascript to transform a block of simple HTML markup into a georgous elegant slider, which can be completely customized using HTML5 data attributes. The markup is valid HTML5 and SEO optimzied, with all content always being available to search engines. When using this plugin, your page layout will be consistent even if javascript has been disabled. This slider includes a smooth and powerful Ken Burns effect which is completely configurable and compatible with all major browsers (including ie7 to ie9, Firefox Chrome, Opera, Safari) and mobile platforms like iphone / ipad. If the Ken Burns effect is not your thing, that’s OK because the “Estro” slider also includes a 2-way “Swipe” mode with configurable transitions.
MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)
EASYSLIDER
Great jQuery image slider plugin for content and images. It is very easy to use – only a few lines of code is needed.
