jQuery UI Slider Labels Under Slider

Question

I am limited to using jQuery 1.4.2 and jQuery ui 1.8.5 (this is not by choice, please do not ask me to upgrade to latest versions). I have created a slider that shows the current value above the slide bar, but what I need now is a way to populate a legend below the slide bar distanced the same as the slider (i.e. if the slider is 100px wide and there are five values the slider will snap every 20px. In this example, I would like the values in the legend to be placed at 20px intervals).

Here is an example of what I want:

Here is the jQuery I have (assimilated from the ui slider demo page):

//select element with 5 - 20 options
var el = $('.select');

//add slider
var slider = $( '<div class="slider"></div>' ).insertAfter( el ).slider({
    min: 1,
    max: el.options.length,
    range: 'min',
    value: el.selectedIndex + 1,
    slide: function( event, ui ) {
      el.selectedIndex = ui.value - 1;
      slider.find("a").text(el.options[el.selectedIndex].label);
    },
    stop: function() {
      $(el).change();
    }
});

slider.find("a").text(el.options[el.selectedIndex].label); //pre-populate value into slider handle.

Answer 1

The posted solutions are totally workable, but here is another solution that requires no additional plugins and produces this (see fiddle):

Here's how to do it:

1. Initiate the slider.

2. For each of the possible values, append a label element with position: absolute (the slider is already position: relative, so the labels will be positioned relative to the slider).

3. For each label, set the left property to a percentage.

CSS

#slider label {
  position: absolute;
  width: 20px;
  margin-top: 20px;
  margin-left: -10px;
  text-align: center;
}

JS

// A slider with a step of 1
$("#slider").slider({
    value: 4,
    min: 1,
    max: 7,
    step: 1
})
.each(function() {

    // Add labels to slider whose values 
    // are specified by min, max

    // Get the options for this slider (specified above)
    var opt = $(this).data().uiSlider.options;

    // Get the number of possible values
    var vals = opt.max - opt.min;

    // Position the labels
    for (var i = 0; i <= vals; i++) {

        // Create a new element and position it with percentages
        var el = $('<label>' + (i + opt.min) + '</label>').css('left', (i/vals*100) + '%');

        // Add the element inside #slider
        $("#slider").append(el);

    }

});