SWIPER SLIDER

In this blog I’ll be discussing about Swiper slider. Slider plays a significant role in designing any website. Swiper Slider is one of the best and widely used sliders due to its exceptional features.

When developing this functionality, the developers had the intention of using it in mobile websites, mobile web apps, and mobile native/hybrid apps. It was designed mostly for iOS devices but it also works with android, windows phone and modern desktop browsers.

This plugin/framework is freely available to use. Due to its responsive properties, it is also known as mobile touch slider. Over time, this framework has evolved itself with significant features. The latest Framework (v7) has very adaptable configuration with great features.

Here are a few top notch features of the Swiper Slider:

• Library Agnostic – This means Swiper Slider does not require any additional JavaScript libraries such as jQuery which makes the slider faster to load due to its smaller file size.

• Mutation Observer – This feature allows automatically reinitializing and recalculating all required parameters. This occurs when you create dynamic changes in the DOM, or in the Swiper styles itself.

• Flexbox Layout – Swiper uses the modern Flexbox layout to slide the images which not only reduces a lot of design issues but also the time involved in size calculation.

• Rich API – Swiper with Rich API allows you to create your own pagination, navigation buttons, parallax effects and much more.

• Images Lazy Loading – This feature loads only the active class slide image while others are not visible. When the user swipes the next slide, the slider loads the next active class and displays that image while hiding all other images. This indeed makes the website load faster.

• Virtual Slides – When you have a lot of slides in the slider or you have heavy images, it will keep the required amount of slides in the DOM.

This framework can be installed in two ways:

• From the terminal by using Bower ($ bower install swiper) or, using Atmosphere as Meteor package or, using NPM ($ npm install swiper).

• It can be also installed by including Swiper files (CSS & JS) in the project, then add the required HTML layout of the Swiper and finally initialize the Swiper Script in the JS file.

To conclude, the Swiper Slider has lot of advantages over other slider options available. In my opinion, I would recommend using this framework when you plan to have a slider section for any website. It’s a flexible and efficient framework that can be used for better website performance.

Reagan Fernandes