WooThemes & FlexSlider sitting in a tree

Written by Mark Forrester on March 7, 2012 News.

Today we can finally announce a secret we’ve being trying desperately hard to keep quiet for the past month. From today you will find the powerful FlexSlider jQuery library housed on our site, that’s because after some negotiations with it’s creator, and really nice guy, Tyler Smith we have acquired the responsive, lightweight, and open source plugin allowing you to implement a really flexible slider on your site – WordPress powered or not.

The acquisition is part of our broader strategy to bring under one roof a suite of products that offer complete end-to-end WordPress development, and further solidify WooThemes as a true platform for the best sites in the world.

FlexSlider is used on thousands of sites and web apps and is used by many other WordPress theme companies. We’ve used FlexSlider on a variety of our own themes, that after experimenting with many others and even trying to build our own. We specifically chose FlexSlider over other alternatives based on the ease of implementation due to the simple and semantic markup, and the fully responsive functionality.

FlexSlider Features Include:

  • Simple, semantic markup
  • Supported in all major browsers
  • Horizontal/vertical slide and fade animations
  • Multiple slider support, Callback API, and more
  • Hardware accelerated touch swipe support
  • Custom navigation options
  • Use any html elements in the slides

The good news is Tyler Smith will continue to maintain, support and upgrade the current library. The team is currently working on the next version with Tyler, which will include a number of optimizations and new features.

Expect more exciting news really soon.

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46 Responses

  1. Jon
    March 7, 2012 at 6:08 pm #

    Are current theme sliders going to be updated to this? Canvas specifically…

    • Magnus
      March 8, 2012 at 12:23 am #

      Yes you can expect Canvas v5 to have responsive design and flexslider 🙂 Older themes will most likely not be updated though.

      • Wes
        March 8, 2012 at 3:48 am #

        Oh my goodness! Is there a date on this release, Magnus?

        • Magnus
          March 8, 2012 at 9:11 am #

          Hopefully Spring 2012 🙂

          • Kent
            March 8, 2012 at 11:44 pm #

            Knallbra, Magnus!!!!!!

          • el Rafa
            March 9, 2012 at 12:20 am #

            I’d pretty much given up on Canvas being revised as a responsive theme, and considered paying someone to do it!

            Are you shooting for early Spring (late March/early April) or late Spring (early June)?

          • Magnus
            March 9, 2012 at 1:09 pm #

            We are aiming to start work in the coming weeks and it shouldn’t take to long to complete. It all depends on if it gets pushed back more or not because of other unfinished tasks 😉

          • Jon
            March 15, 2012 at 12:46 am #

            By extension then, will canvas commerce also get updated?

          • Ryan Ray
            March 15, 2012 at 12:24 pm #

            @Jon – Yup, Canvas Commerce being a child theme of Canvas inherits the responsiveness of Canvas. Plus WooCommerce has already been coded to work in responsive themes. 🙂

      • Tim
        March 8, 2012 at 3:41 pm #

        Responsive design in Canvas would be most awesome. My personal favorite theme. Cant wait. Thanks.

  2. Martin Jarvis
    March 7, 2012 at 6:15 pm #

    Well done guys. I’m guessing that part of the strategy, as well as strengthening the core ‘woo’ product set, is to passively introduce yourselves to a community of website owners and developers who wouldn’t ordinarily have known about, or considered WordPress or Woothemes. Clever… but do continue to spend lots of our licence fees on great new themes too 🙂

  3. Edward McIntyre
    March 7, 2012 at 6:26 pm #

    First off, awesome.

    Secondly, WordPress plugin please!

    • Mark Forrester
      March 7, 2012 at 9:01 pm #

      I’m sure you’ll love what we have planned 🙂

  4. Matt
    March 7, 2012 at 6:43 pm #

    Awesomeness. Indeed, a plugin with manager would rock!

  5. AJ Clarke
    March 7, 2012 at 6:57 pm #

    Kick ass.

  6. Paul Hastings
    March 7, 2012 at 8:19 pm #

    Does it have a GitHub repo?

  7. Tom Dent
    March 7, 2012 at 8:54 pm #

    Good work, been waiting for a good fully responsive slider for a while. Nivo was always good but lacked that responsive edge and Slidedeck was too much for what it was really.

  8. Deep Titanic
    March 8, 2012 at 12:45 am #

    Integrate Integrate Integrate!

    I want Woo to create a WooCommerce extension that links FlexSlider to my toaster.

    • Ryan Ray
      March 8, 2012 at 7:46 pm #

      Can your toaster run WordPress? 😛

  9. Matthew Jones
    March 8, 2012 at 9:24 am #

    That’s great! We used this on our latest Storefront Theme (http://storefrontthemes.com) which is also WooCommerce enabled here…

    http://themeforest.net/item/storefront-echo-responsive-buddypress-ecommerce/1679675?ref=storefrontthemes

    • Matthew Jones
      March 8, 2012 at 9:25 am #

      Sorry, to finish, I’m really excited that it is going to be continually developed with some new enhancements!

      • Ryan Ray
        March 8, 2012 at 7:47 pm #

        *Hottness* all around Matthew!

  10. Lee
    March 8, 2012 at 10:19 am #

    Good stuff, fellas. Looking forward to a responsive Canvas. 🙂

  11. allmyhoney
    March 8, 2012 at 10:45 am #

    A responsive canvas – very nice 😉

  12. ChrisWD
    March 13, 2012 at 8:34 am #

    Will the flexislider also apply to the Listings theme.

    • Magnus
      March 13, 2012 at 10:57 am #

      No, we will only be putting Flexslider in new themes.

  13. Tilt
    March 13, 2012 at 11:38 am #

    Cogratulations on the acquisition. Will wooThemes be publicly releasing a flexslider WP plugin? The original author had it on the cards…

    • Magnus
      March 13, 2012 at 5:27 pm #

      It’s on our cards as well 🙂

  14. Ramona
    March 13, 2012 at 8:33 pm #

    Any chance that the free theme Swatch will be updated with responsive design and this flex slider? If not, could you point me in a direction to try and adapt the theme and slider myself? I’ve enjoyed customizing Swatch and have purchasing a premium theme on my to do list.

  15. Chris Robinson
    March 13, 2012 at 8:59 pm #

    Awesome! See you guys are planning some updates, would this by chance include thumbnail support?

    • Ryan Ray
      March 15, 2012 at 12:26 pm #

      I assume you are saying thumbnail navigation?

      We’ve a couple how-tos specifically for WordPress planned. 🙂

  16. Mairead
    March 17, 2012 at 7:28 am #

    Magnus, when you say

    “you can expect Canvas v5 to have responsive design and flexslider. Older themes will most likely not be updated though.”

    do you mean older versions of Canvas or older themes in the woothemes gallery?

    • Magnus
      March 18, 2012 at 4:51 am #

      I mean older themes 🙂

  17. Amit Sharma
    March 19, 2012 at 8:46 am #

    I have just integrated the flexslider in my WooCommerce website and it is working pretty well but unfortunately homepage slider of “Simplicity” theme is not working.

    Please have a look here:
    http://50.22.11.51/~letrnote/

    Can anybody help me on this issue ASAP

    • Magnus
      March 20, 2012 at 8:49 am #

      If you post in our simplicity support forum we can help you with that 🙂

  18. Lionel
    March 22, 2012 at 10:32 am #

    Do we actually have to had content manually from the code (for now ?) or is there a back-office way to do it like in any other Wootheme slider ?

  19. Mark
    May 5, 2012 at 2:11 pm #

    Looking forward to Canvas V5 dropping. Already an awesome theme in its own right.

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