Figma to HTML

Anima Plugin

Anima is a Figma plugin designed to bridge the gap between design and development seamlessly. This plugin automates the conversion of designs into clean, developer-friendly code, supporting multiple frameworks such as React, Vue, and HTML/CSS. This capability not only enhances workflow efficiency but also aligns with development standards through customizable code outputs.

It enriches Figma's functionality by integrating features like responsive design, allowing designers to set breakpoints and adapt designs to different devices, thereby jumpstarting the development process and leaving just the final touches to correct. The plugin also includes smart layers that bring interactivity through hover effects, entrance animations, and media embedding, improving both the feel and functionality of the design.

Anima facilitates team collaboration by allowing users to share prototypes and manage project access levels, which is great for feedback and iterative design processes. Installation is straightforward, directly from Figma’s plugin library, embedding seamlessly into the Figma workspace where designers can begin their transition from design to interactive prototype or ready-to-use code. For designers and developers looking to streamline their workflow from design to deployment, this plugin provides a suite of tools that reduce the time and effort required to develop frontend code while maintaining high standards of design fidelity and interactivity.

Installing Anima and Creating an Account

The first step is to navigate to the 'Plugins' menu in the toolbar. Search for "Anima" in the plugin search bar and click 'Run' to add it to your Figma. Once installed, you will be prompted to create an account if you don't already have one. Follow the on-screen instructions to sign up.

Using Anima to Export HTML Code

You can use Anima in two primary ways to work with your designs: generating HTML code directly from your Figma design or using developer mode in Figma to manually copy the codes. To generate HTML, make sure your design is ready for export, then open the Anima plugin from the Plugins menu, click on 'Get Code', and select 'HTML' from the options. The code generation might take a little time, but once it's ready, click on the indicated button to go to the Anima web tool

Reviewing Your Website

At this point, Anima will display your newly generated website, directly from your Figma design. Here, you can see your project come to life. You have the option to download a zip file of your project with all the necessary files to host it anywhere you choose. Please note, downloading the project files is a premium feature, ensuring you get the full, expansive functionality Anima offers.

With just one click, this website was created—the easiest and quickest way to bring designs to life. Now, all that’s left is to polish some details, making this process incredibly productive. You can also collaborate effortlessly. Just click on the 'Share' button to invite team members or share your project with stakeholders. Click on the publish tab and use the toggle to make your website online. You can also see that we have an option to connect to a custom domain which is a pro feature. Copy the link and paste it in your browser to see your website exactly as a visitor would.

Anima with Dev Mode

Another way to use this plugin is to use the dev mode in Figma. First, click on the dev mode toggle to activate this feature. Next, in the code menu, select the Anima plugin, then choose HTML as your output format. The code will take a bit of time to generate. Once it’s ready, you’ll see that all the necessary files have been generated for us. Now, let’s take these codes into action. Copy the HTML code; we’ll paste it into an editor to start building our project.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code, commonly known as VS Code, is a highly popular, free, and open-source code editor developed by Microsoft. It's available across major platforms like Windows, macOS, and Linux. One of the key features of VS Code is its robust support for extensions. These extensions can add new languages, tools, and themes to the editor, allowing for a highly customizable development environment. VS Code also offers integrated Git control, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion (often called IntelliSense), snippets, and code refactoring. This integrated environment helps developers streamline their coding process, reducing the need to switch between different tools and interfaces.

Additionally, it supports debugging tools that can be essential for diagnosing and solving issues within the code. The editor allows you to set breakpoints, inspect variables, view call stacks, and execute commands directly in an integrated terminal. Its lightweight nature and powerful capabilities make it suitable for both beginners and experienced developers, handling projects of any size efficiently.

In VS code, start by clicking on 'Open Folder' and create a new folder named for our project. Next, create a new file by clicking on the new file icon or press Command + N. Name this file 'index.html'. Now, paste the HTML code that we copied from the dev mode in Figma right here. Now, save the file and open the directory to preview our HTML file. We can see that all the website’s components are here, but there is no styling; for that, we will need to apply CSS.

Styling with Style.css

Back in Figma, we’ll go into the style.css code and copy it. Now we need to create a new file named style.css which will host our code we’ve copied. It’s important to understand that the filename has to be the same as we imported them in our HTML file. Now, paste the code into the file and save it.

The style.css is a standard file used to define the visual presentation of a webpage. It controls the styling of HTML elements, including layout, colors, fonts, and spacing. By separating content (HTML) from presentation (CSS), style.css enhances web development efficiency and maintainability. This separation allows developers to change the design without altering the underlying HTML structure, ensuring a consistent look and feel across multiple web pages by linking the same CSS file to them.

Now, if we save the style.css file and open our website, we can see that the styling has been applied. Some elements are not clearly visible because they are using variables that we have not yet defined.

Variables with Styleguide.css

To address this, we need to go back into Figma and retrieve our remaining codes. Just as we did previously, copy and paste the code into a new file. This time, name the file 'styleguide.css'. This file will contain all the variables for our design. With the variables now defined, our elements appear exactly as they should. However, when we resize the browser, we notice that our layout isn't responsive. Let's address this issue.

Web Inspector Tool

The web inspector is a handy tool for tweaking settings. Simply right-click and choose 'Inspect Element'. It is an essential tool for web developers and designers, offering a comprehensive suite of debugging and inspection features that facilitate the development and optimization of websites. The Web Inspector provides a detailed look at the underlying structure of a webpage. Users can examine and modify the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly within the browser, observing changes in real time. This tool is invaluable for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of web technologies and improve their site's responsiveness and user experience.

Let’s first center our header horizontally to enhance the visual balance of our page. Navigate to the layout section of your CSS and add the property 'justify-content: center.' This simple line of code will center all the children of the layout horizontally. Now, to ensure our changes take effect, we need to adjust the header settings. Go into the header’s CSS and remove the 'align-self' property, which is currently set to 'stretch'. We need to do the same with the content to center it. With these adjustments, our design is now perfectly centered, creating a more aesthetically pleasing layout.

Center element to page

We can center the element on the page. Here’s how to do it:

• Add the following styles to the body selector in the style.css file. The body contains the main content of the page.
• display flex is to set the display property of the body element to a flex container. Flexbox is a layout model that allows elements to be aligned and distributed space within a container more efficiently.
• justify content center is to aligns the flex container's children, in this case our layout, along the main axis which is horizontally, by default.
• align items center is to align our layout along the cross-axis, the vertical by default.
• we then set the minimum height of the body element to 100 viewport height units. This ensures that the body takes at least the full height of the browser window, allowing the content to truly be centered both vertically and horizontally on the entire page. Now, when we resize the browser, we can observe that our design responds exactly as intended. The header and content adapt progressively, wrapping smoothly to accommodate smaller screens. Our design is now fully responsive.

Anima Animations and Interactions

We can also create animations using Anima. This tool allows you to easily design hover effects and entrance animations, which can be translated into code.

• First, let's select the header and create an entrance animation. We'll choose the 'move up' effect and set a delay of 1 second, along with the same duration. Below, you can see the code for this animation.
• Next, we'll save this and add a hover effect to the button, making it grow over a duration of 0.5 seconds.
• You can preview this directly within the plugin by clicking on the 'Preview' button. And there you have it: a beautifully animated header entrance and a dynamic grow effect on the button, all accompanied by the associated code.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Anima plugin streamlines the design process by allowing designers to create interactive and responsive prototypes directly within their favorite tools, enhancing both efficiency and collaboration.