10 Framer Motion Examples (Animating With Framer Motion In React)
Discover inspiring Framer motion examples to create smooth, realistic animations for your web projects. Try our web design solution today.
Animations can make or break a web design project. If your animations could be smoother or more natural, users might feel like they are navigating a broken website. However, getting animations just right can be a challenge. Fortunately, Framer motion makes creating beautiful, realistic animations for React projects easy. In this blog, we’ll explore some Framer motion examples to inspire your own animations. We’ll also introduce you to NUMI’s Framer design solution to help you start quickly.
What is Framer Motion?
Framer motion is an open-source animation library built by Framer. This powerful tool adds slick, professional animations to web projects, especially those built with React. One of its standout features is its ability to simplify the animation process.
With Framer Motion, developers can build smooth, visually stunning animations without writing a lot of CSS. As a React-based library, Framer Motion provides a simple and intuitive API, making it easy to create animations.
Creating Dynamic Web Experiences
Whether trying to animate a button on click, create a draggable element, or handle complex gesture-based interactions, Framer motion has you covered, all with just JavaScript. This eliminates many of the headaches associated with traditional CSS-based animations, which often require multiple lines of code and a lot of trial and error.
Framer Motion Connection
With its easy integration, seamless connection with Framer design tools, and thriving community, Framer motion makes creating dynamic, interactive web experiences faster, easier, and much more fun.
Whether you’re animating UI elements or adding complex interactions, Framer motion delivers smooth, production-ready results with minimal hassle.
5 Best Features of Framer Motion
1. Create Animations Easily with Framer Motion
Framer motion simplifies creating animations with React. The library allows developers to define their animations using the animate prop. When values within this prop change, the corresponding motion component automatically animates to the new state.
This feature streamlines the animation process, enabling developers to focus on their designs rather than on implementation details.
```javascript
<motion.div animate={{ opacity: 1, scale: 1 }} />
```
2. React to User Gestures with Framer Motion
Framer motion supports various gestures that can trigger animations responding to user interactions. For instance, you can use props like whileHover, whileTap, and whileDrag to define how a component should animate in response to these gestures.
```javascript
<motion.button whileHover={{ scale: 1.1 }} whileTap={{ scale: 0.9 }} />
```
3. Use Variants To Manage Animation States
Variants allow you to define multiple animation states for components and orchestrate animations across entire sub-trees with a single animate prop. This declarative approach makes managing complex animations and transitions between different states easy.
```javascript
const variants = {
open: { opacity: 1, x: 0 },
closed: { opacity: 0, x: "-100%" },
};
<motion.nav animate={isOpen ? "open" : "closed"} variants={variants} />
```
4. Server-Side Rendering Support
Framer motion supports server-side rendering (SSR), ensuring that the animated state of
components is rendered on the server side.
This feature prevents flashes of re-styled content after JavaScript loads, providing a smoother user experience.
5. Use Motion Values for Fine-Grained Control
Motion Values create a declarative and reactive chain of values that can be used to update the results of animations or gestures. They allow for fine-grained control over animations and can be used with other features like scroll-linked animations.
```javascript
const { scrollYProgress } = useScroll();
<motion.div style={{ opacity: scrollYProgress }} />
```
Additional Features
Framer motion combines these features to provide a comprehensive solution for creating rich, interactive animations in React applications, making it a popular choice among developers looking to enhance user experiences with minimal effort.
- Hardware-Accelerated Animations: Framer motion intelligently decides when to run animations on the GPU, ensuring smoother performance.
- Exit Animations: Components can have exit animations that play when removed from the DOM.
- Keyframes: Support for animating through an array of values over time.
Scroll-Linked Animations: Use scroll position to drive animations, creating effects like parallax scrolling.
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Our fabuolous design team ensures all your design work is done well. NUMI helps with:
- Product design
- Web design
- Framer development
- Webflow development
- Mobile design
- Prototyping
- UX design
- All of your startup's design needs!
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Related Reading
8 Benefits Of Adding Animations To Your Application
1. Increased User Engagement
Animation helps capture and retain user attention by creating visually pleasing and interactive experiences. Transitions and animations can make the app feel more intuitive and responsive, thus encouraging users to spend more time using the app.
2. Improved User Navigation
By utilizing animation, developers can guide users through the app's interface, making navigating between different sections and features easier.
Smooth transitions and subtle animations provide visual cues, giving users a sense of direction and making the overall experience seamless and enjoyable.
3. It Makes Your Website Stand Out
Many websites still have static content, and adding animation to yours can make it stand out.
While there are different ways to use animation to give your website a unique look, if you want your website to deliver the desired results, you also need excellent web design skills and innovative content.
4. Mobile-First Approach
If you add animation, remember that the mobile-first approach has become the industry standard in:
- Web design
- Development
According to Statista, more than half of all global website traffic already comes from mobile devices, so mobile-friendliness should be considered when adding animated content and features to your website.
5. People Remember Animated Messages Longer
Any message you convey through visual and audio presentation will last longer in the minds of your audience. A short animated video introducing your brand or its products/services can significantly impact your website's traffic.
Various studies have indicated that people are more likely to remember information they got through audio-visual formats than through reading alone, and this is plain to see in the learning pyramid. From the web design perspective, animation can help you communicate better and sell more products and services through your website.
6. It Provides Great Flexibility
Animation is flexible and can help you introduce several products or present much information in a short and simple video.
Animated Intro
Some visitors need more time to browse through entire websites, looking for specific:
- Products
- Services
- Information
Using an animated video can help you introduce all the services at once.
7. It is Good for SEO
Animation can have a positive effect on search engine optimization (SEO) by:
- Improving user experience
- Increasing engagement time
The longer users spend on your website, the better its search engine ranking. Animation can help:
- Decrease bounce rates
- Create better backlink opportunities
- Increase social engagement
- Enhance mobile users' experience
8. It Makes Your Message Easier to Convey
It’s common for consumers to look for different types of information before making a purchase. The process of researching your company and its products/services can be time-consuming for new customers who know little to nothing about your business.
Animation is an easy way to convey your message in a short span of time while allowing you to include plenty of information.
Animated Persuasion
While your animated video can attract the attention of prospective customers, it can also help convince them to perform the desired action, be it making a purchase or subscribing to a service.
6 Components Of React Framer Motion
1. Motion Components: The Core of Framer Motion
Motion components form the foundation of Framer motion. They are simple replacements for standard HTML and SVG elements that enable you to add animations to your React applications.
Every HTML and SVG element has a corresponding motion component. For example: <motion.div /> for a div element <motion.circle /> for an SVG circle
Animated Components
These components function like their counterparts but come with additional props that enable animations, gestures, and more. They allow developers to:
- Animate properties like position, scale, and opacity.
- Add gestures such as drag, pan, hover, and tap.
- Respond to viewport changes and deep animations through variants.
2. AnimatePresence: Exit Transitions Made Easy
AnimatePresence is a key component for managing exit animations for components that are conditionally rendered.
It detects when direct child components are removed from the React tree and animates them accordingly. This is particularly useful for smooth transitions when elements enter or leave the DOM.
3. LayoutGroup: Grouping For Smoother Layout Animations
LayoutGroup allows you to group motion components that should perform layout animations together. When motion components with a layout prop are rendered, they automatically detect and animate layout changes, providing a cohesive transition effect across grouped elements.
4. LazyMotion: Boost Performance By Reducing Bundle Size
LazyMotion helps reduce bundle size by allowing asynchronous loading of motion features. This means that only the necessary parts of the library are loaded when needed, optimizing performance without sacrificing functionality.
5. MotionConfig: Global Configurations for Motion Components
MotionConfig sets global configuration options for all child motion components. This can include default transition settings or other shared properties that apply to multiple components within a specific context.
6. Reorder: Drag-and-Drop Animations Made Easy
The Reorder component facilitates drag-to-reorder functionality for lists or groups of items. This makes it easy to create interactive interfaces where users can rearrange elements, such as tabs or to-do items, through simple drag-and-drop interactions.
Your One-Stop Shop for Startup Design Needs
NUMI is a framer web design agency that world-class framer developers and product designers power. Backed by Y Combinator, NUMI handles all of your startup's sourcing/vetting/hiring needs for design.
Our fabuolous design team ensures all your design work is done well. NUMI helps with:
- Product design
- Web design
- Framer development
- Webflow development
- Mobile design
- Prototyping
- UX design
- All of your startup's design needs!
Subscribe to a guild of world-class designers ready to embed on your team today. Schedule a call with us today to learn more!
Framer Motion Examples: Animating In React Using Framer Motion
One of Framer motion's standout features is the ability to create fluid page transitions. Using the AnimatePresence component, you can manage the entrance and exit of components as pages change. You might:
- Fade the outgoing page to transparent, then have the new page fade in.
- Create a slide transition, where pages move horizontally or vertically off-screen as new ones slide in.
- Add scaling effects, where the page content grows or shrinks during transitions.
These transitions enhance user flow, making your website feel like a cohesive experience rather than a series of disconnected pages.
Hover Effects: Add Interactivity to Your Website with Framer Motion
Hover animations are a simple but effective way to add interactivity to your elements. With Framer motion’s while-over property, you can animate buttons, images, or icons when users hover over them:
- Enlarge a button when hovered to make it feel more clickable.
- Rotate or tilt icons to make them visually engaging.
- Change colors smoothly to indicate interactivity or call-to-action.
- These subtle hover effects make your site more dynamic and inviting for users.
Drag-and-Drop Interactions: Use Framer Motion to Create Interactive Experiences
Framer motion allows you to easily add drag-and-drop functionality to any element using the drag property. Here’s how you can use this feature:
- Create draggable cards in a gallery, allowing users to rearrange them.
- Build interactive sliders where users drag handles to adjust values.
- Design custom file-upload areas where users drag files to a designated zone to upload.
You can also restrict dragging to the X or Y axis using drag="x" or drag="y", providing complete control over the interaction.
Animated Modals and Pop-ups: Use Framer Motion to Enhance Your UI
Animated modals or pop-ups can make your UI more engaging and visually appealing. Using Framer motion:
- Modals can fade in and scale up from the center, providing a smooth transition into focus.
- Exit animations can slide the modal off-screen or fade away when users close it.
- Add dimmed background effects that fade alongside the modal to enhance focus on the modal content.
These animations ensure a clean and professional presentation of important information or interactions.
Scroll-based Animations: Use Framer Motion to Create Engaging Storytelling Experiences
Scroll-triggered animations can add depth and interactivity to a website by animating elements as the user scrolls down the page:
- Elements like images or text can fade or slide into view as they become visible, creating engaging storytelling experiences on long-scrolling pages.
- Use parallax effects where background images move slower than foreground elements, giving a sense of depth.
- Trigger animations on scroll by detecting when specific sections enter the viewport and animating elements within those sections.
Using useInView or similar hooks lets you finely control when and how elements animate as users scroll through content.
Staggered Animations: Create Smooth User Experiences with Framer Motion
Staggered animations bring elements to life sequentially, and Framer motion makes this effortless using staggerChildren:
- When displaying a list of items (like product cards), each item can fade or slide into view one after another, creating a cascading effect.
- Animate navigation links, where each link appears in a staggered sequence when the menu opens.
- Use staggered animations for onboarding steps or feature lists, guiding users' attention through steps.
This technique makes the user experience smoother and draws attention to content in a visually pleasing way.
Complex Keyframe Animations: Use Framer Motion to Create Intricate Effects
Framer motion supports keyframe animations, allowing you to animate through a sequence of values. This is useful for creating more intricate effects:
- A bouncing ball effect, an element moves from one side of the screen to another, scaling down and back up as it bounces.
- Color-changing animations, where an element transitions between multiple colors in a loop (e.g., for loading indicators or attention-grabbing buttons).
- Rotating elements through different angles and applying easing functions to give it a smooth, lifelike motion.
Keyframe animations let you specify multiple stages of an animation, providing greater control over how elements behave.
Gesture-controlled Animations: Make Your Web Applications More Interactive with Framer Motion
With Framer motion, you can build animations that respond to user gestures, such as taps, clicks, or drags:
- Use the whileTap property to shrink buttons slightly when clicked, giving users immediate feedback.
- Create interactive image galleries where users can drag to navigate between images, swipe, or pinch to zoom.
- Build animated sliders that respond to dragging, making UI components more tactile and responsive.
Gesture-controlled animations make your web applications feel more interactive and intuitive, especially on touch-enabled devices.
Animated Headers and Footers: Improve Your Website’s Navigation with Framer Motion
Headers and footers don’t have to be static! Using Framer motion, you can animate these elements to enhance user experience:
- Create a sticky header that animates when scrolling (e.g., shrinking the header as users scroll down and expanding it when they scroll up).
- Animate a footer section that slides into view when users reach the end of a page, highlighting important links or calls to action.
- Reveal content in your footer with a smooth slide-up effect when users hover over specific sections.
These animations make the navigation experience more engaging while ensuring critical elements like the header or footer remain functional and eye-catching.
Hero Section Animations: Use Framer Motion to Make a Strong First Impression
The hero section is typically the first thing users see on a website, so animating it can make a solid first impression:
- You can have the hero text fade in or slide in from the side as the page loads, instantly drawing attention.
- Add animated background images or gradual color transitions to create a visually appealing entry.
- Have hero buttons or CTAs pulse or bounce, making them more prominent and encouraging clicks.
Animating the hero section can captivate visitors from the start and set the tone for the rest of the site.
Bonus Example: Loading Animations
Adding a loading animation can improve perceived performance and keep users engaged while content loads:
- Use spinners, progress bars, or pulsing elements to indicate loading status.
- Animate your company logo or other branded elements to reinforce your brand identity during loading.
These animations ensure that users remain engaged, even during moments of downtime.
Getting Started With React Framer Motion
To get started with Framer Motion in a React project, first install the Framer-motion package from npm. Ensure that your project is using React version 16.8 or greater.
```bash
npm install framer-motion
```
Import the Motion Component
Once installed, you can import the motion component into your React components:
```javascript
import { motion } from 'framer-motion';
```
Use Motion Components to Animate Your App
Framer motion provides motion components that are enhanced versions of standard HTML and SVG elements.
You can replace primitive DOM elements (like <div>, <svg>, etc.) with their motion counterparts, such as <motion.div> and <motion.svg>. These components come with additional props for adding animations and gestures.
Example: To animate a div element, you can use the animate prop:
```javascript
<motion.div animate={{ opacity: 1 }} initial={{ opacity: 0 }} />
```
Animate Elements with Framer Motion
You can animate elements using the animate prop, which accepts an object of CSS properties to animate. You can also use variant labels or imperative animation controls.
Example:
```javascript
<motion.div
animate={{ x: 100 }}
transition={{ duration: 0.5 }}
/>
```
Add Gestures to Your Animated Components
Framer motion supports various gestures like:
- Hover
- Tap
- Pan
- Drag
You can use props such as whileHover, whileTap, and drag to define how your components should respond to user interactions.
Example:
```javascript
<motion.button
whileHover={{ scale: 1.1 }}
whileTap={{ scale: 0.9 }}
/>
```
Use Variants for Coordinated Animations
You can define variants to manage animations across multiple components or sub-trees with a single animated prop, allowing for coordinated animations.
Example:
```javascript
const variants = {
hidden: { opacity: 0 },
visible: { opacity: 1 },
};
<motion.div variants={variants} initial="hidden" animate="visible" />
```
Server-Side Rendering with Framer Motion
Framer motion supports server-side rendering (SSR), ensuring that a component's animated state is rendered on the server to prevent flashes of re-styled content after JavaScript loads.
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8 Best Practices for Animating With Framer Motion
1. Feedback and Guidance Through Animation
Use subtle animations to provide real-time feedback. Animations can signal users about their input (such as a button press or form submission) to:
- Reduce user uncertainty
- Enhance the interface's usability
Strategic use of motion can guide users through actions or highlight changes in application states, improving the navigational flow.
2. Purposeful Motion
Every design animation should have a clear purpose. Excessive or irrelevant motion can overwhelm users or detract from the user experience.
Ensure animations are smooth, quick, and cohesive, enhancing functionality without causing distractions.
3. Consistency Across the Board
Consistency in motion and animation ensures a coherent user experience across all aspects of a product. The uniform use of animation in design reinforces user familiarity and comfort with the interface, promoting a seamless interaction from start to finish.
4. Accessibility Considerations
Make animations accessible by providing options to reduce or remove motion for users who are sensitive to it. This inclusivity ensures the design is user-friendly for a broader audience, meeting:
- Individual user needs
- Preferences
5. Empirical Validation
Observing real interactions can reveal how effectively animations contribute, allowing for refinements that closely match user preferences and behaviors.
6. Adaptive Animations for Diverse Platforms
Update design animations to fit the specific characteristics of different platforms. Mobile interfaces require animations that are responsive to touch interactions and optimized for smaller screens.
7. Early Integration in the Design Process
Integrate UX motion and animation design early in development to identify potential usability issues. Experimentation with various animation styles and speeds can help determine the most effective approach for the product’s target audience.
8. Stay Updated with Animation Design Trends
New trends and motion design technologies can inspire you to update animation applications. Advances in Framer enhance animations’ capabilities and open up new possibilities for creating engaging user experiences.
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