Not long ago the New York Times had an article which showed a road in Brooklyn that had been reconstructed to make it safer and more pleasing to the eye. To show the difference  in the reconstruction project, they showed a before and after picture using Flash that let the visitor drag a slider over the images, which were sandwiched with one on top of the other, so that you could easily see how dramatic the changes were. I immediately thought that this could be done in JavaScript using jQuery, so I set out to do it. Here’s the result:

Pretty slick no? The possibilities for this plugin are endless. Doctors can have before and after images of patients, Photoshop users can show the before and after differences between images, remodelers can show the before and after images of projects and on and on. This plugin weighs in at only 7K and can be used multiple times on a page.

Being used by:

and many more…

Download

Download jquery.beforeafter.zip (version 1.4  – September 20, 2011)

What’s So Great About this Plugin?

• Slick effect, no Flash needed
• It’s just 7 Kb (5 Kb compressed)
• Reusable on multiple containers
• Degradable. If the visitor doesn’t have JavaScript they will still see both images.
• Did we mention it’s slick?

How to Use

First, your before and after images must be the same size.  Both images must exist within a containing div which must have an ID.  See this example.

<div id="container">
 <div><img alt="before" src="before.jpg" width="600" height="366" /></div>
 <div><img alt="after" src="after.jpg" width="600" height="366" /></div>
</div>

All images *MUST* have the width and height declared otherwise the plugin won’t work in Safari, Chrome, and any other webkit-based browsers.

The plugin requires jQuery (of course) and the draggable component of jQueryUI. Both files are bundled with the plugin however you can point to other copies if you prefer (e.g. jquery on Google and jqueryui on Google). Upload the plugin files on your site and link to them:

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.beforeafter.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(function(){
	$('#container').beforeAfter();
});
</script>

$('#container').beforeAfter({
	animateIntro : true,
        introDelay : 2000,
        introDuration : 500,
        showFullLinks : false
});

Demos

• Example 1 (keyboard navigation enabled)
• Example 2

Note that the plugin uses several images which are kept in the same folder as the plugin. If you store the plugin in another folder on your server, update the path to these images. Please be sure to read the license before using.