Mastering Navigation with Smart Components in Digital Interfaces

Navigation is crucial in any digital interface, and Smart Components enable the creation of custom interactive navigation elements that integrate seamlessly with the rest of your prototype. This guide covers essential concepts such as nesting components, adding events to elements using Event Variables, and passing these through your components. One key advantage of using nested components is the ability to control their states fully, including unique hover states for elements within another component.

Starting at the Atomic Level

Framer allows the creation of fully interactive and animated components, with the capability to nest components within each other. In this example, we're building a navigation bar component for a website that includes two types of nested components, each with unique interactions. Our project will feature a navigation bar containing various nested components: five navigation items and a shopping cart component. The design of these nested components, the nav list item and the shopping cart, will influence the overall design of our navigation bar. Therefore, the optimal workflow begins with constructing the 'deepest' nested component and building outward.

Nesting Components

With our two components ready, we can create the main component where they will be nested. Draw your navigation bar, select it on the canvas, and click the Component tool in the Toolbar. To nest a different component in the new component, simply drag any other component to the Component Canvas and place it within your designed navigation bar.

Triggering Interactions from the Navigation Bar

Back on the main canvas, we want to enable users to tap 'Clothing' and navigate to an entirely new screen. If we connect the component using the Prototyping Connector to a new screen, we can set up an interaction. However, this setup would trigger the interaction if any part of the component is tapped, which is not our goal. We want the transition to occur only when a specific element is tapped. This is where Event Variables come in handy. Event Variables are special types of variables attached not to properties like opacity or fill, but to events, enabling precise control over interactions.