Note: If you have a different UI than in the course, you can change it back by clicking the '?' in the bottom right corner of Figma and select 'Go back to previous UI'. Happy Figma'ing!

How to create slot placehold components in Figma

This lesson is exclusive to members

Course contents

Questions

Course info

177 lessons / 16 hours 46 quiz questions 21 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, aspiring Figma enthusiasts! Are you ready to embark on an exhilarating journey with me, Dan Scott, as we unlock the full potential of our Figma skills in the dazzling realm of UX/UI Design using Figma Advanced?

Try Figma for free by clicking here.

This course is tailor-made for those who have already mastered the fundamental principles of UI/UX Design using Figma. If you've triumphed over my Figma Essentials course or have a sneaking suspicion that there's a treasure trove of unexplored tools, tips, workflows, and updates awaiting your discovery, then look no further! This course is your golden ticket to taking your UI/UX prowess to the next level.

Together, we'll start by delving into the depths of multilevel nested autolayouts, and unravel the secrets used by UX professionals by learning:
- Workflow techniques, managing design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts like true virtuosos.
- Learn how to use Variables and put them to work creating even more complete prototypes.
- Use variables to make Light & Dark Modes + Compact & Comfortable spacing versions of your components. 
- You’ll then take your new knowledge of variables to understand and create your own Design Tokens. 
  • - Unleashing the magic of advanced animation techniques, captivating users with animated background gradients and Houdini Text.
  • - Harness the power of Lottie animation files, breathing life into your designs.
  • - Crafting responsive elements that effortlessly adapt to any device, proving your design prowess knows no bounds.
  • - Unleashing the full potential of powerful images & video masking techniques, amplifying the visual impact of your creations.
  • - Mastering advanced typography features, transforming words into captivating works of art.
  • - Embracing the realm of AI, infusing your process with its genius to elevate your skills as a UX designer.
  • - Elevate your prototyping game, conducting user tests with finesse using advanced techniques.
  • - Unveiling sticky scroll buttons that stack, animated anchor points and booleans, and a host of other captivating effects.
  • - Creating enchanting dropdown menus, hover grow effects for images, and expanding search bars.
  • - Discovering the right accessibility tools & techniques, ensuring inclusivity and usability for all users.
  • - Becoming a variant boss, expertly taming unwieldy variants to just 1 or 2.
  • - Unveiling the secrets of seamless collaboration with designers, developers, and stakeholders.
  • - Mastering the art of exporting production-ready assets, bringing your designs to life beyond the realm of Figma.
  • - Unearthing professional workflow tricks & shortcuts, saving you precious time and skyrocketing your efficiency.
  • - Plus much more exciting advanced Figma goodness along the way!

As you journey through this course, you'll acquire the skills wielded by UX professionals, gaining a profound understanding of the UX Design industry. From concept to a highly polished finish, you'll confidently manage your own UX projects ideal for your portfolio.

Throughout the course, I'll assign assignments and projects that nurture your skills and empower you to create your very own unique UX design masterpiece for your portfolio. Don’t worry if this all seems overwhelmingly advanced right now, because the BYOL crew stands ready to support and guide you, ensuring your questions get answered.

It's time to embrace the call to upgrade yourself and transcend from being a good UX Designer to a bona fide Figma UX Superhero! Unlock your potential, save the day, and let your design prowess soar!

Requirements:

- A copy of Figma (a free plan is available on the Figma website).
  • - Basic knowledge of Figma is required. I recommend watching my Figma Essentials course prior to embarking on this epic adventure.

Who this course is for:

  • - UX/UI adventurers who already have a basic understanding of Figma.
  • - Self-taught Figma enthusiasts yearning for structured guidance.
  • - Graduates of my Figma Essentials Course, hungry for more knowledge and skills.
  • - Visionaries who have developed their own unique Figma approach but crave exploration of the vast universe of tools, updates, and time-saving techniques.

What you'll learn:

  • - Diving deep into multi level nested autolayouts. 
  • - Robust components that are easy to update and hard to break. 
  • - Component properties. 
- Variables
- Design Tokens
- Advanced Prototyping using Variables
  • - Learn Workflow tips and tricks for managing your design assets, styles, components, grid and column layouts.
  • - Advanced animation techniques
  • - Animated Background gradients. 
  • - Houdini Text
  • - Animate along a path in Figma
  • - How to add Lottie animation files in Figma
  • - Build responsive elements ready for any device size.
  • - The best shortcuts & plugins to make you a more efficient UX designer.
  • - Absolute Positioning of Autolayouts. 
  • - Powerful images & video masking techniques. 
  • - Advanced typography features. 
  • - Learn to use AI in your process to make you a better UX designer. 
  • - Advanced prototyping techniques to level up your user tests. 
  • - Make prototypes better and faster using tricks & shortcuts. 
  • - Sticky scroll buttons that stack. 
  • - Video playback controls. 
  • - Animated anchor points and booleans.
  • - Create a Dropdown menu
  • - Create a hover grow effect for images.
  • - Create and expanding Search Bar 
  • - Learn the right accessibility tools & techniques  
  • - Become a variant boss. Cutting down those 100 variants to just 1 or 2. 
  • - Learn the best ways to work with other designers, developers and stakeholders. 
  • - Build a UX project from beginning to end ready for your portfolio.
  • - Export production ready assets.
  • - Learn professional workflow tricks & shortcuts.
  • - Forum support from me and the rest of the BYOL crew.
  • - All the techniques used by UX professionals
  • - 160 videos of detailed Figma Advanced Content.
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We’re awarding ‘Pass’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Pass’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Merit certificates

We’re awarding ‘Merit’ level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your ‘Merit’ certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Don’t forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Distinction certificates

We're awarding 'Distinction' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Distinction' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when you have passed the quiz and completed all your projects

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hi everyone. In this video we're gonna make a slot component. What is it? Basically we've got something that we're gonna reuse over  and over again, like the outside of this modal. There's a cross, there's  rounder corners, there's a drop shadow. Instead of having two  or a hundred different pop-up mods all sharing  a lot of the same elements.

And when you have to adjust, say the cross  or when you have to adjust part of it. And then when you wanna adjust part of it,  you've gotta go and adjust all of them. What we can do is create something  that has a placeholder slot in the middle. This one here. Then we can aside some  preferred incident swaps. Okay?

So people can go through it  and just change the center of it. It'll stop people going and thinking, all right,  I need to change this quite a bit. So I'm going to break it apart and create another instance. Getting all messy. So we'll build one from scratch. We'll get a little bit lost together, we'll fix it again.

Then we'll have the sweet slot component  where only the center part changes. Okay? Not the wrapper. Alright, let's jump in and do it. Alright, so I've got two separate modals. I've made a modal section for these guys, okay?

And what I'm gonna do is I want  to get it set up first with just something in here  and then I'll switch it out to the placeholder afterwards. 'cause I want some actual content that I might be using  to kind of get the padding and stuff, right? So for this to work, the parent needs to be an order layout. Shift day. We'll make it a component  'cause that's what we're kind of using this for Now. It's in modals.

I'm gonna call this one popup. This cross here, I'm gonna say you are absolutely positioned  where I'm gonna drag you to over here. I'm gonna make sure you're in the top right now. The padding, I'm gonna increase all the way around. Who remembers the shortcut? All you do, hover above it there  and hold down the option.

Ke mac, alt keana, pc. Make sure you zoomed in far enough  so you can actually get the line hold shift as well. And it will do all the sides. Uh, I'm gonna go, mine's gonna be quite big. I'm gonna go up to 40. Remember multiples of eight.

Alright, so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna get this  stuff and pull it out. Okay? I'm gonna pull it out down here  and inside of here I'm going to put a slot component. Okay? So the slot component needs  to be its own main component  and we know main components can't  live in other main components. So I'm gonna say frame.

I'm gonna control or command. Ah, and I'm gonna call this one my slot. Now you can call it anything you like. There's no official rules to it. What most people do though is they'll give it a stroke. They'll make the stroke pink  and they'll go to the advanced settings  and change it from solar to dash.

You don't have to do that, but  that's what everyone seems to be doing. Does it need a fill? Yeah, it can do. What size should it be? It doesn't really  matter 'cause it's gonna get switched. Just something to hold our modal open when it's hugging it.

So this needs to be a component. So I'm using my shortcut command option K,  CTRL Alt K on a pc. Just a reminder. And I'm gonna drag an instance  of this, okay? Over to here to get into this  and just make sure that this uh,  pop-up modal is hugging both ways. Now we're going to make the bits that go inside  of it, they don't need the um,  External chrome around this modal.

Okay? These guys here just need to be components. We're gonna use the instant swap. So we need to make this a component. Command R. It's in the modal section.

So this is going to be email, sign up. This one over here. I don't need the modal. Okay, that was just there for design. Okay? 'cause I wanted to switch inside of there.

This one's called delete. Yeah, why not? You can come modals. Let's get big enough. You're gonna come in here as well. Make sure it's a component and the slot.

We probably will keep that somewhere else  'cause it's not gonna be part, you can use this in anything. We're using it for modal. You can use it. Any element. Okay? And is this going to work?

Let's give it a test. Actually no. Uh, the main component here,  we need to add the property. Remember instance swap for earlier in the course. So this component here, I'm gonna say under properties. Actually no, I'm gonna do it for this slot.

So select this slot inside of it. I would just say slot. I want you to be able to be instant swap. Okay? What do I want? I want you to be able to swap  with the preferred values of not everything.

Just my suite modals option. And I want just delete and sign up. Close that down. Now is it gonna work? Let's switch  to my assets library option two. So have a look at our components where we've got mods.

We're gonna say I want this popup on this document here. Go into it, select on the slot  and say, actually I'd like to change it from that. Pause the video, steer it for a little while,  realize my preferred values aren't in there. Realize what I've done. Include it in the course  'cause it's probably gonna happen to you. Is I went and did all that whole stuff  and went uh, instant swap and I did all this  and I hit cross instead of create property.

Don't do that. Okay, so let's fix it up. So I'm gonna say you and you create property not cross. Now I should be able to click on my parent Moodle. Okay? And there inside of there is an instant swap, okay?

With some preferred values, okay? And I can switch this out now  to whatever one I want, except that one's broken. Uh, great work Dan, you get the idea. Let's leave that there. Ignore that. Okay?

Actually let's switch this to the other one. That's the goal is that I have this full control now  of the popup modal  and the elements that are generic  for lots of different stuff. Okay? If I come back and say, actually I need  to adjust the padding, okay, I can do it to this one, okay? And they all adjust. I don't have to go and adjust the 10 different mods  that I've got for popups.

You can have more than one slot. We've just done one here. Alright, let's figure out what went wrong with this one. I think I know what it is. Uh, this is not an auto layout, it is just two bits inside  of a component, okay? And they get thrown into here an auto layout.

So the auto layout just smushes them together. So I'm gonna say as you are a component,  but also shift a an auto layout. Now hopefully over here, if I switch this one,  you need to be you. There we go. Alright. That is a slot component  and how to break it a couple of different ways  and fix it.

Again, the  Big things that'll catch you out is that the things  inside including this need  to be a component and an auto layout. And because they need to be main components, they can't be  inside this original one. You need to make them outside here, bring an instance  of them and then when you're ready,  click on the instance that you wanna swap. Okay? In our case, the slot. Do the instance swap property.

Make sure you hit create property and not cross. The other thing we might do is add  a bit of text to this slot. Where is it? Okay, so we might go inside of this one. Let's grab the text tool  and of course one placeholder slot just  so that when people are using it kinda gives 'em a bit  of a cue to what we're doing. You could add all sorts of notes in here.

I think we'll do before we go actually is let's publish it  because I wanna use it back over here. Okay? So I'm in that kinda main style design file  where I've got all my components, okay? So I'm gonna go option three, alt three on a pc. Let's publish all the things we've done. Okay?

And because we've already connected this design file,  we should be able to option one, no,  option two to go to the assets. Or you can go up here. Okay? And let's have a look, not the local components. Let's have a look at the main styles. Where's my mods?

There it is there. Let's grab the popup. Okay? And then me or somebody that's working  with my design system can go through  and say, actually I want to delete, actually no,  I need the email sign up. It's a bit big Dan. There you go.

Alright, that is it. We made a placeholder slot component. I'll see you in the next video.
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