Thanks, it now works properly.
My slider control is statically created. So all I needed to do was insert one additional statement to resolve the slider's numeric inc/dec button elongation oddity, as shown below.
SetCtrlAttribute(handlePanel, PANEL1_SLIDERCTRL,20472,40);
SetCtrlAttribute(handlePanel, PANEL1_SLIDERCTRL,ATTR_DIG_DISP_WIDTH,85);
Steve