Parallax Slider with jQuery

Happy New Year! We will kick start 2011 with a vibrant image slider tutorial. We will make use of the parallax principle to move different backgrounds when we slide to […]

Happy New Year! We will kick start 2011 with a vibrant image slider tutorial. We will make use of the parallax principle to move different backgrounds when we slide to an image in order to create some nice perspective. This will give a great depth to the whole slider when it’s in motion.

The wonderful images are taken from Tetsumo’s Flickr Photo Stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tetsumo/

So, let’s start!

The Markup

The HTML structure is going to consist of a main container with the class “pxs_container”. We will add a wrapper for the three different backgrounds which we will animate differently to create the parallax. The background images will have some transparency since we want to see them moving on top of each other.

We will also add a loading element and the two unordered lists for the full images and the thumbnails. Further, we will add the navigation elements.

<div id="pxs_container" class="pxs_container">
	<div class="pxs_bg">
		<div class="pxs_bg1"></div>
		<div class="pxs_bg2"></div>
		<div class="pxs_bg3"></div>
	</div>
	<div class="pxs_loading">Loading images...</div>
	<div class="pxs_slider_wrapper">
		<ul class="pxs_slider">
			<li><img src="images/1.jpg" alt="First Image" /></li>
			<li><img src="images/2.jpg" alt="Second Image" /></li>
			...
		</ul>
		<div class="pxs_navigation">
			<span class="pxs_next"></span>
			<span class="pxs_prev"></span>
		</div>
		<ul class="pxs_thumbnails">
			<li><img src="images/thumbs/1.jpg" alt="First Image" /></li>
			<li><img src="images/thumbs/2.jpg" alt="Second Image" /></li>
			...
		</ul>
	</div>
</div>

Now, let’s take a look at the style.

The CSS

We will start with the main container. Since we will use the whole page for the width of the slider, we will set it to 100%. It will be of position relative because we will set all the element inside to position absolute (and we want them to be positioned relative to the container and not the page):

.pxs_container{
	width:100%;
	height:420px;
	position:relative;
	border-top:7px solid #333;
	border-bottom:7px solid #333;
	overflow:hidden;
	-moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #000;
	-webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #000;
	box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #000;
}

The wrapper for the divs that will contain the parallax backgrounds will have a repeated background image. This image is just a simple gradient:

.pxs_bg{
	background:transparent url(../images/bg.png) repeat top left;
}

The divs inside of the wrapper will share the following style properties:

.pxs_bg div{
	position:absolute;
	top:0px;
	left:0px;
	height:420px;
	background-repeat:repeat;
	background-position:top left;
	background-color:transparent;
}

The width will be set dynamically in the JavaScript. The single background divs will have all a different background image:

.pxs_bg .pxs_bg1{
	background-image:url(../images/bg1.png);
}
.pxs_bg .pxs_bg2{
	background-image:url(../images/bg2.png);
}
.pxs_bg .pxs_bg3{
	background-image:url(../images/bg3.png);
}

We will also set the left value of these divs dynamically. But we will come back to that later. Let’s take a look at the other elements’ style.

The following wrapper will be invisible in the beginning:

.pxs_slider_wrapper{
	display:none;
}

It contains all the elements that we want to load in the beginning, so once loading is done, we will show the wrapper and all its content.

Let’s reset the style for both lists:

.pxs_container ul{
	margin:0px;
	padding:0px;
	list-style:none;
}

The main idea for the slider list is that we make a really long list with all the li elements having a width of the whole window. So, what you see on screen of the slider is actually one whole li. We will set the width of the ul dynamically to be the window width times the number of images in the list. Making the li elements float left and the correct width of the ul will ensure that the li elements are lined up next to each other:

ul.pxs_slider{
	position:absolute;
	left:0px;
	top:0px;
	height:420px;
}
ul.pxs_slider li{
	height:420px;
	float:left;
	position:relative;
}

The slider image inside of the li will be centered horizontally by applying auto margins to the left and right:

ul.pxs_slider li img{
	display:block;
	margin:35px auto 0px auto;
	-moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #222;
	-webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #222;
	box-shadow:0px 0px 7px #222;
	border: 8px solid transparent;
	-moz-border-radius:4px;
	-webkit-border-radius:4px;
	border-radius:4px;
}

Adding a transparent border and a box shadow will create a glass like effect around the image.

The thumbnails list will be positioned absolutely, too. We add a left of 50% because we want to center it, by dynamically setting its width and a negative left margin in the JavaScript:

ul.pxs_thumbnails{
	height:35px;
	position:absolute;
	top:320px;
	left:50%;
}
ul.pxs_thumbnails li{
	position:absolute;
	display:block;
}

We’ll add a white border around the thumbnails and give them a slick box shadow:

ul.pxs_thumbnails li img{
	border: 5px solid #FFFFFF;
	-moz-box-shadow:1px 1px 7px #555;
	-webkit-box-shadow:1px 1px 7px #555;
	box-shadow:1px 1px 7px #555;
	cursor:pointer;
	display:block;
	opacity:0.7;
}

The current image’s thumbnails should be completely opaque:

ul.pxs_thumbnails li.selected img{
	opacity:1.0;
}

The common style of the two navigation spans is the following:

.pxs_navigation span{
	position:absolute;
	width:30px;
	height:60px;
	-moz-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #000;
	-webkit-box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #000;
	box-shadow:0px 0px 2px #000;
	top:145px;
	opacity:0.6;
	-moz-border-radius:4px;
	-webkit-border-radius:4px;
	border-radius:4px;
	cursor:pointer;
}
.pxs_navigation span:hover{
	opacity:0.9;
}

Let’s add an arrow to each navigation span:

.pxs_navigation span.pxs_prev{
	background:#000 url(../images/prev.png) no-repeat center center;
}
.pxs_navigation span.pxs_next{
	background:#000 url(../images/next.png) no-repeat center center;
}

We will set the left (pxs_prev) and the right (pxs_next) value dynamically in order to stick to the left and right side of the image.

And finally, we will style the loading element which will be centered:

.pxs_loading{
	color:#fff;
	font-size:20px;
	padding:15px 15px 15px 50px;
	position:absolute;
	background:#333 url(../images/ajax-loader.gif) no-repeat 10px 50%;
	-moz-border-radius:15px;
	-webkit-border-radius:15px;
	border-radius:15px;
	opacity:0.7;
	width:180px;
	position:absolute;
	top:150px;
	left:50%;
	margin-left:-90px;
}

And that’s all the style! Now, let’s add some kick-ass jQuery!

The JavaScript

The main idea of this slider is to slide the images (obviously) and to animate the three backgrounds differently to create some perspective. So, when we, for example, slide to the next image, we will animate the left value of the slider ul to minus the window width (because that’s the width of one li). We will also animate the background div that is visually the top-most background, but the animation will only be half of the window width. The background behind that one will move one quarter of the window width and so on. So the background which is “more far” will move less, just what the parallax principle describes.

We want to create a plugin out of this script, so we will initially define some options. We will start by caching the most important elements.

(function($) {
	$.fn.parallaxSlider = function(options) {
		var opts = $.extend({}, $.fn.parallaxSlider.defaults, options);
		return this.each(function() {
			var $pxs_container 	= $(this),
			o 				= $.meta ? $.extend({}, opts, $pxs_container.data()) : opts;
			
			//the main slider
			var $pxs_slider		= $('.pxs_slider',$pxs_container),
			//the elements in the slider
			$elems			= $pxs_slider.children(),
			//total number of elements
			total_elems		= $elems.length,
			//the navigation buttons
			$pxs_next		= $('.pxs_next',$pxs_container),
			$pxs_prev		= $('.pxs_prev',$pxs_container),
			//the bg images
			$pxs_bg1		= $('.pxs_bg1',$pxs_container),
			$pxs_bg2		= $('.pxs_bg2',$pxs_container),
			$pxs_bg3		= $('.pxs_bg3',$pxs_container),
			//current image
			current			= 0,
			//the thumbs container
			$pxs_thumbnails = $('.pxs_thumbnails',$pxs_container),
			//the thumbs
			$thumbs			= $pxs_thumbnails.children(),
			//the interval for the autoplay mode
			slideshow,
			//the loading image
			$pxs_loading	= $('.pxs_loading',$pxs_container),
			$pxs_slider_wrapper = $('.pxs_slider_wrapper',$pxs_container);
				
			//first, preload all the images
			var loaded		= 0,
			$images		= $pxs_slider_wrapper.find('img');
				
			$images.each(function(){
				var $img	= $(this);
				$('<img/>').load(function(){
					++loaded;
					if(loaded	== total_elems*2){
						$pxs_loading.hide();
						$pxs_slider_wrapper.show();
							
						//width of an image
						//(assuming all images have the same sizes)
						var one_image_w		= $pxs_slider.find('img:first').width();
				
						/*
						set the width of the slider,
						of each one of its elements, and of the
						navigation buttons
						 */
						setWidths($pxs_slider,
						$elems,
						total_elems,
						$pxs_bg1,
						$pxs_bg2,
						$pxs_bg3,
						one_image_w,
						$pxs_next,
						$pxs_prev);
				
						/*
						set the widths of the thumbs
						and spread them evenly
						 */
						$pxs_thumbnails.css({
							'width'			: one_image_w + 'px',
							'margin-left' 	: -one_image_w/2 + 'px'
						});
						var spaces	= one_image_w/(total_elems+1);
						$thumbs.each(function(i){
							var $this 	= $(this);
							var left	= spaces*(i+1) - $this.width()/2;
							$this.css('left',left+'px');
								
							if(o.thumbRotation){
								var angle 	= Math.floor(Math.random()*41)-20;
								$this.css({
									'-moz-transform'	: 'rotate('+ angle +'deg)',
									'-webkit-transform'	: 'rotate('+ angle +'deg)',
									'transform'			: 'rotate('+ angle +'deg)'
								});
							}
							//hovering the thumbs animates them up and down
							$this.bind('mouseenter',function(){
								$(this).stop().animate({top:'-10px'},100);
							}).bind('mouseleave',function(){
								$(this).stop().animate({top:'0px'},100);
							});
						});
							
						//make the first thumb to be selected
						highlight($thumbs.eq(0));
							
						//slide, when clicking the navigation buttons
						$pxs_next.bind('click',function(){
							++current;
							if(current >= total_elems)
								if(o.circular)
									current = 0;
							else{
								--current;
								return false;
							}
							highlight($thumbs.eq(current));
							slide(current,
							$pxs_slider,
							$pxs_bg3,
							$pxs_bg2,
							$pxs_bg1,
							o.speed,
							o.easing,
							o.easingBg);
						});
						$pxs_prev.bind('click',function(){
							--current;
							if(current < 0)
								if(o.circular)
									current = total_elems - 1;
							else{
								++current;
								return false;
							}
							highlight($thumbs.eq(current));
							slide(current,
							$pxs_slider,
							$pxs_bg3,
							$pxs_bg2,
							$pxs_bg1,
							o.speed,
							o.easing,
							o.easingBg);
						});
				
						/*
						clicking a thumb will slide to the respective image
						 */
						$thumbs.bind('click',function(){
							var $thumb	= $(this);
							highlight($thumb);
							//if autoplay interrupt when user clicks
							if(o.auto)
								clearInterval(slideshow);
							current 	= $thumb.index();
							slide(current,
							$pxs_slider,
							$pxs_bg3,
							$pxs_bg2,
							$pxs_bg1,
							o.speed,
							o.easing,
							o.easingBg);
						});
				
					
				
						/*
						activate the autoplay mode if
						that option was specified
						 */
						if(o.auto != 0){
							o.circular	= true;
							slideshow	= setInterval(function(){
								$pxs_next.trigger('click');
							},o.auto);
						}
				
						/*
						when resizing the window,
						we need to recalculate the widths of the
						slider elements, based on the new window width;
						we need to slide again to the current one,
						since the left of the slider is no longer correct
						 */
						$(window).resize(function(){
							w_w	= $(window).width();
							setWidths(
								$pxs_slider,
								$elems,
								total_elems,
								$pxs_bg1,
								$pxs_bg2,
								$pxs_bg3,
								one_image_w,
								$pxs_next,
								$pxs_prev
								);
							slide(
								current,
								$pxs_slider,
								$pxs_bg3,
								$pxs_bg2,
								$pxs_bg1,
								1,
								o.easing,
								o.easingBg
								);
						});

					}
				}).error(function(){
					alert('here')
				}).attr('src',$img.attr('src'));
			});				
		});
	};
	
	//the current window width
	var w_w				= $(window).width();
	
	var slide			= function(current,
	$pxs_slider,
	$pxs_bg3,
	$pxs_bg2,
	$pxs_bg1,
	speed,
	easing,
	easingBg){
		var slide_to	= parseInt(-w_w * current);
		$pxs_slider.stop().animate({
			left	: slide_to + 'px'
		},speed, easing);
		$pxs_bg3.stop().animate({
			left	: slide_to/2 + 'px'
		},speed, easingBg);
		$pxs_bg2.stop().animate({
			left	: slide_to/4 + 'px'
		},speed, easingBg);
		$pxs_bg1.stop().animate({
			left	: slide_to/8 + 'px'
		},speed, easingBg);
	}
	
	var highlight		= function($elem){
		$elem.siblings().removeClass('selected');
		$elem.addClass('selected');
	}
	
	var setWidths		= function($pxs_slider,
	$elems,
	total_elems,
	$pxs_bg1,
	$pxs_bg2,
	$pxs_bg3,
	one_image_w,
	$pxs_next,
	$pxs_prev){
		/*
		the width of the slider is the window width
		times the total number of elements in the slider
		 */
		var pxs_slider_w	= w_w * total_elems;
		$pxs_slider.width(pxs_slider_w + 'px');
		//each element will have a width = windows width
		$elems.width(w_w + 'px');
		/*
		we also set the width of each bg image div.
		The value is the same calculated for the pxs_slider
		 */
		$pxs_bg1.width(pxs_slider_w + 'px');
		$pxs_bg2.width(pxs_slider_w + 'px');
		$pxs_bg3.width(pxs_slider_w + 'px');
		
		/*
		both, the right and left of the
		navigation next and previous buttons will be:
		windowWidth/2 - imgWidth/2 + some margin 
		(not to touch the image borders)
		 */
		var position_nav	= w_w/2 - one_image_w/2 + 3;
		$pxs_next.css('right', position_nav + 'px');
		$pxs_prev.css('left', position_nav + 'px');
	}
	
	$.fn.parallaxSlider.defaults = {
		auto			: 0,
		speed			: 1000,
		easing			: 'jswing', 
		easingBg		: 'jswing', 
		circular		: true, 
		thumbRotation	: true 
	};
	//easeInOutExpo,easeInBack
})(jQuery);

We also add the following script to initiate our slider:

$(function() {
	var $pxs_container	= $('#pxs_container');
	$pxs_container.parallaxSlider();
});

The options for the slider are the following:

  • auto: How many seconds to periodically slide the content. If set to 0 then autoplay is turned off.
  • speed: Speed of each slide animation
  • easing: Easing effect for the slide animation
  • easingBg: Easing effect for the background animation
  • circular: Circular slider
  • thumbRotation: The thumbs will be randomly rotated

And that’s all! We hope you enjoyed the tutorial and find it useful!

Tagged with:

Manoela Ilic

Manoela is the main tinkerer at Codrops. With a background in coding and passion for all things design, she creates web experiments and keeps frontend professionals informed about the latest trends.

Stay up to date with the latest web design and development news and relevant updates from Codrops.

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Comments are closed.
  1. Great tutorial . Congrats.

    It’s possible to have a caption on each picture?

  2. Hey Mary, this time again, I liked it very much.. will spend some time to see it to integrate with one gallery site we’re currently working on.

    Yours tutorials helps us to learn lot of new techniques.. especially jquery animations…

    thanks for sharing
    Xcellence-IT
    Web Development Company India

  3. Awesome Tut.
    Will be implementing, just what i was looking for, as anyone else seems to overcomplicate things!

  4. Pretty cool example ๐Ÿ™‚
    Anyways a little heavy i guess.
    Thanks for share it!

  5. Excellent job, as always – I always find these tutorials great to learn new things & create effects I love.

    I do seem to have found a bit of a bug in this if you have more than 9 images though… anyone else having that problem?

  6. Hi. After the first sorry for my English.

    Bobbu I also have this problem.

    8 photos animates as normal and the next already bad !!

    Anyone have a solution?!

  7. My English is still bad, so I apologize again. ๐Ÿ™‚
    Solved the problem.
    The problem lies in jQuery 1.4.3
    Parallax the Slider uses with jQuery 1.4.2
    Just change the old jQuery.

  8. Hi, I can’t get the auto setting to work. When I enter “1” instead of 0 the images won’t change at all and navigation doesn’t work either..

  9. Oh, nevermind. I didn’t realise it was in milliseconds. Another question though: how can I remove thumbs?

  10. Hey Mary Lou, thank you very much for this tutorial. I used this concept to build an entire website for my most recent project. My implementation uses a total of 9 layers in for the parallax background and can be found here:

    http://reducereprocessing.com/

    I tweaked the code a bit to allow content other than images by placing ‘s inside the ‘s and modifying the css and js accordingly. Also the thumbnails were modified to be used as site navigation. I really wish I had more time to make it cleaner, but we have a trade show coming up. Rush rush rush. ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Anyway, thanks again!

    ..k..

  11. Whoops, that was supposed to say:

    “I tweaked the code by placing DIV’s inside the LI’s and modifying the css and js accordingly.”

    Guess that’s my bad for including the angle brackets. *shrug*

    ..k..

  12. Freaking awesome is all I have to say… This has got to be one of my all time favorites…

    Having a brain damage moment (seriously LOL I have right front temporal issues) and for the life of me I am getting a headache trying to figure this one out. Say you have a website with only a 880px width where do you make the edits to fit it in without the images off center and the arrow buttons out of view?

    Any help would be greatly appreciated…

  13. Strang bug, i simple change from 0 to 3 the second for automatic option, i mean:

    auto : 3, //how many seconds to periodically slide the content.

    then the script start to rotate but veryyyy slowlyyy take i guess 30 second to change from first photo to seocnd one, i try with firefox 4.0 chrome and ie 7, all same problem.

  14. Sorry, delete my previsions comment.

    Thank you for this super pretty script.

  15. Hello I’m currently developing a site that’s already using mootools and javascript. When I put in this slide is disables my other functions. Is there a work around for this?

  16. Hi Mary

    Again, super slider… You do amazing work…

    I hate to be a bother but I’m trying to place it in a site with a set page width of 880px and I was wondering how do you set it as page width and not window? I tried but it failed to run and the images and buttons were off center by a mile…

    Thanks so much…

  17. wow! I love what you did there. Hats down. Hope you do not mind me using this slider in my upcoming projects. Keep up with the great work.

  18. Is there a way to add a pause/play functionallity?
    EXCELLENT PLUGIN! great job!

  19. Snap!
    This is really neat! ๐Ÿ™‚ Greate job using the Parallax!

    How do I donate?
    Keep up the superb work!

    / JJ – Sweden

  20. This slider is a complete idea of what I was recently trying to build and failed in some areas. After looking at your code I was like DOH!

    So now I am using your code.

    What I need for the project that I am working on is this. I have the slider animating every 5 seconds. When the user clicks on a thumb then animation stops permanently. I’m looking to have the animation resume after 10 seconds.

    What line and what script should I look at to change or add to to make this happen.

    Any help would be great. This request goes out to everyone else too. No sense have only the creator of the slide answer if they are too busy.

  21. For some reason the static background image on .pxs_bg doesn’t show. This is also the case in your example, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t. Any ideas?

  22. This slider is god damn sexy!!!

    Altough I had soem problem with a Joomla site where I have added the slider code in a module and it didn’t work in IE9. IE8, FF etc showed the slider as it should.

    The IE9 problem turned out to be solved when updated Mootools to latest version.

    Just a tip for anyone adding this to Joomla and faces problem with IE9… Try to update Mootools to see if that solves the problem!

    ๐Ÿ™‚

  23. Great tutorial. But the only thing that bothers me is the choppiness (it’s not smooth when you scroll). Could it be the size of the images?

  24. Hi,
    Slider is great, but I’ve noticed one bug:
    When page is long and scroll bar appears, slider just ignore that and images don’t stay in the middle of the viewable area. It stay a few pixels on the right. Then when I re-size window, it jumps on the right place, few pixels left.
    Any solution for this problem?

  25. An excellent slider, thanks for all your effort developing it.

    How would I go about temporarily pausing on the current slide (in auto mode) when the mouse enters the slide’s area (ul.pxs_slider li)?

    thanks

  26. Hello, it’s a wonderful work ๐Ÿ™‚
    but i like to add this to my project but with little change, it is about the background, i need the background to be the same picture that the slider shows it, i mean, if the slider shows “image 1” the background will be also “image 1” but with bigger width and height and with some transparency.
    Can you help me plz, it’s urgent ๐Ÿ™‚

    Thanks

  27. Is there a way to put an anchor into the page so that I can link to the 2nd image from another site. So when the link is clicked, it will go to the 2nd image but have the slider still be able to be used to go back to the 1st and so on.

  28. This is a beautiful gallery effect… thank you for sharing it!

    I was wondering if there’s a way to add a scrolling option to the thumbnails so I can add a lot of images into the gallery?