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Surprisingly Effective Ways To Build A Slider With Tailwind CSS

Slider

As a FrontEnd technology blogger, you are always looking for ways to improve your skills and create better user interfaces. One of the most popular UI components is the slider, which allows users to select a value from a range of options. In this article, we will explore how to build a slider with Tailwind CSS, a utility-first CSS framework that allows you to quickly design and customize your UI components.

What is Tailwind CSS?

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that provides a set of pre-defined classes that you can use to style your HTML elements. It is designed to be highly customizable and allows you to create complex UI components with minimal CSS code. Tailwind CSS is gaining popularity among FrontEnd developers due to its ease of use and flexibility.

The description of Slider ui component

A slider is a UI component that allows users to select a value from a range of options by moving a slider handle along a track. Sliders are commonly used in forms and settings pages to allow users to select a value from a range of options.

Why use Tailwind CSS to create a Slider ui component?

Tailwind CSS provides a set of pre-defined classes that you can use to style your HTML elements. This makes it easy to create complex UI components like sliders without writing a lot of CSS code. Additionally, Tailwind CSS is highly customizable, which means you can easily modify the styles of your UI components to match your design requirements.

The preview of Slider ui component

To create a slider with Tailwind CSS, we will use the range input element and style it using Tailwind CSS classes. The slider will have a track, a thumb, and a range highlight that shows the selected value.

Free download of the Slider's source code

The source code of Slider ui component

To create a slider with Tailwind CSS, we will use the range input element and style it using Tailwind CSS classes. The slider will have a track, a thumb, and a range highlight that shows the selected value.

<div class="h-screen w-full overflow-hidden flex flex-nowrap text-center" id="slider">
    <div class="bg-blue-600 text-white space-y-4 flex-none w-full flex flex-col items-center justify-center">
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        <p class="max-w-md">It's fast, flexible, and reliable — with zero-runtime.</p>
    </div>
    <div class="bg-pink-400 text-white space-y-4 flex-none w-full flex flex-col items-center justify-center">
        <h2 class="text-4xl max-w-md">Tailwind CSS works by scanning all of your HTML</h2>
        <p class="max-w-md">It's fast, flexible, and reliable — with zero-runtime.</p>
    </div>
    <div class="bg-teal-500 text-white space-y-4 flex-none w-full flex flex-col items-center justify-center">
        <h2 class="text-4xl max-w-md">React, Vue, and HTML</h2>
        <p class="max-w-md">Accessible, interactive examples for React and Vue powered by Headless UI, plus vanilla HTML if you’d rather write any necessary JS yourself.</p>
    </div>
</div>
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    const slider = document.querySelector('#slider');
    setTimeout(function moveSlide() {
        const max = slider.scrollWidth - slider.clientWidth;
        const left = slider.clientWidth;

        if (max === slider.scrollLeft) {
            slider.scrollTo({left: 0, behavior: 'smooth'})
        } else {
            slider.scrollBy({left, behavior: 'smooth'})
        }

        setTimeout(moveSlide, 2000)
    }, 2000)

})
</script>

How to create a Slider with Tailwind CSS?

  1. Create a range input element in your HTML code.
<input type="range" class="slider">
  1. Use Tailwind CSS classes to style the slider.
<input type="range" class="slider bg-gray-300 appearance-none w-full h-1 rounded-full outline-none">

In this code, we have added the bg-gray-300 class to set the background color of the slider track to gray. We have also added the appearance-none class to remove the default styling of the input element, w-full to set the width of the slider to 100%, h-1 to set the height of the slider track to 1px, rounded-full to make the slider track rounded, and outline-none to remove the outline when the slider is focused.

  1. Add a thumb to the slider.
<input type="range" class="slider bg-gray-300 appearance-none w-full h-1 rounded-full outline-none thumb">

In this code, we have added the thumb class to create a thumb for the slider. We will style the thumb later.

  1. Add a range highlight to the slider.
<input type="range" class="slider bg-gray-300 appearance-none w-full h-1 rounded-full outline-none thumb track">

In this code, we have added the track class to create a range highlight for the slider. We will style the range highlight later.

  1. Style the thumb of the slider.
<input type="range" class="slider bg-gray-300 appearance-none w-full h-1 rounded-full outline-none thumb">
.slider::-webkit-slider-thumb {
  -webkit-appearance: none;
  appearance: none;
  width: 16px;
  height: 16px;
  background-color: #fff;
  border: 2px solid #4a5568;
  border-radius: 50%;
  cursor: pointer;
}

In this code, we have added the ::-webkit-slider-thumb pseudo-element to style the thumb of the slider. We have set the width and height properties to 16px, added a white background color, a 2px solid border with a gray color, and a border radius of 50% to make the thumb circular. We have also set the cursor property to pointer to indicate that the thumb is clickable.

  1. Style the range highlight of the slider.
<input type="range" class="slider bg-gray-300 appearance-none w-full h-1 rounded-full outline-none thumb track">
.slider::-webkit-slider-runnable-track {
  width: 100%;
  height: 1px;
  background-color: #4a5568;
  border-radius: 999px;
}
.slider::-moz-range-track {
  width: 100%;
  height: 1px;
  background-color: #4a5568;
  border-radius: 999px;
}

In this code, we have added the ::-webkit-slider-runnable-track and ::-moz-range-track pseudo-elements to style the range highlight of the slider. We have set the width and height properties to 100%, added a gray background color, and a border radius of 999px to make the track rounded.

Conclusion

In this article, we have explored how to create a slider with Tailwind CSS. We have used the range input element and styled it using Tailwind CSS classes to create a slider with a track, a thumb, and a range highlight. We have also shown how to customize the styles of the slider to match your design requirements. With Tailwind CSS, you can create complex UI components like sliders with minimal CSS code and easily modify them to match your design requirements.