Jquery Mobile Form - Flip toggle switch control

    A binary flip switch is a very common UI element in the mobile web world and was made popular by our very own iOS. This flip switch is used mostly for binary on/off or true/false data inputs. To create a flip switch or a toggle switch, start with a select with data-attribute="slider" and two options. Jquery Mobile would style this select as a regular flip switch with capsule corners and a a circular handle which can be either dragged from one end to the other or tap either sides of the switch.

    The flip toggle switch is available in 2 flavors/sizes - regular and mini. Adding a data attribute data-mini="true" to the input tag renders a smaller sized flip switch. Let's take a look at the code sample below to understand the working in a better way.

    In the code above, you will see 4 different implementations of the flip switch. The first one is a regular flip switch with the label and the toggle button one below the other. The second implementation is exactly similar to the first implementation with the only difference of the added data attribute "data-mini="true"" which reduces the size (basically height) of the flip switch.

    The third implementation gets the label and the slider on the same line. This implementation is done using a div with data attribute data-role="fieldcontain" around the label and select tags. This div has to be within a form tag. Maintaining the HTML structure is very important when using JQuery Mobile framework. To disable the input field just add the keyword "disabled" to the input tag and your input type would be disabled.

     Since this flip switch is nothing but a select with two options, we can make either one of the options selected by default by just writing "selected" for that particular option in the select. This can be seen in the code above, where the last last flip switch is disabled and is "ON"

    For the sake of accessibility, jQuery Mobile requires that all form elements be paired with a meaningful label. To hide labels in a way that leaves them visible to assistive technologies. — for example, when letting an element's placeholder attribute serve as a label — apply the helper class ui-hidden-accessible to the label itself. While the label will no longer be visible, it will be available to assisitive technologies such as screen readers.

     Hope this post has been informative to you and helps you use the range input type effectively to create the range slider in your next Jquery Mobile based application. Drop a comment to let me know what you feel about this post as well as the earlier series on Jquery Mobile listview. Share the post if is has helped you, so that maximum developers benefit from this one.

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