Im having troubles getting the jQuery UI Slider customized for my purposes.

On load the slider and its content should automatically animate to a certain position. Ideally it should animate to the very right, then stop and then animate back (as a loop) as long as the user doesn't hovers over scroll content or slider.

Following my default slider setup (http://jsfiddle.net/mayko/j6WuE/1/):

var scrollbar = $("#slider").slider({
    animate: 3000,
    min: 0,
    max: $("#timeline_content .items").width(),
    change: handleSlider,
    slide: handleSlider
}); 
function handleSlider(e, ui) {
    $("#timeline_content").stop().animate({scrollLeft: ui.value}, scrollbar.slider("option", "animate"));
}

If i now try to set the value like this:

$('#slider').slider({'value': 1000});

The scroll content nicely animates, but the handle just jumps to that new position.

Even if I click on the slider track itself the animation of scroll content and slider handle are not in sync.

Does anyone got a solution?