Lexiata XSlider

Lexiata XSlider is a tiny, blazing-fast image slider plugin built from scratch. Total footprint: about 300KB on disk, with a front-end payload of about 6KB gzipped (CSS + JS combined). No bundled libraries, no jQuery on the front-end, no third-party services.

Why XSlider?

Most slider plugins ship with hundreds of templates, layer animations, and features you will never use — and your visitors pay for every kilobyte. XSlider keeps only what you need:

• Clean image sliders with optional click-through URLs
• Horizontal, vertical, fade and zoom-fade animations
• Autoplay, swipe/drag, keyboard navigation
• Arrows + bullets, fully customisable
• Responsive images (srcset) — phones download phone-sized files
• SEO-friendly markup with proper alt text and ARIA roles
• Lazy initialisation (the slider boots only when scrolled into view)
• Style via CSS classes + the WordPress Customizer (Additional CSS)
• Native Gutenberg block, Elementor widget, shortcode, and PHP function — insert a slider in any editor or builder

Built for WordPress agencies and freelancers by Suresh L. Bamunusinghe at Lexiata.lk — battle-tested in production sites.

Key features

• Up to 8 settings tabs — General, Size, Controls, Animations, Autoplay, Optimize, Slides, Developer
• Image and Blank slides — Blank slides support a custom background colour
• Clickable URL per slide — Set link, choose target tab, optional nofollow
• Drag-to-reorder slides in the editor (mouse, touch or keyboard)
• Duplicate a slide or a whole slider with one click
• Live preview in the slide editor
• Click-to-copy shortcode and PHP code
• Accessible — keyboard navigation, ARIA roles, focus rings, pauses for keyboard users and reduced-motion visitors
• Mobile, tablet, desktop arrow visibility controls
• RTL-ready — works on right-to-left sites
• No external dependencies — pure vanilla JS front-end (~4KB gzipped)