Comments now support rich text (bolding, italicizing, strikethroughs, links, and lists), and notifications are batched for all comment threads you’re not actively involved in.

The new integration lets you embed a Mixpanel preview in FigJam to bring data into your whiteboarding sessions. File previews are automatically synced with Mixpanel so the latest data changes in Mixpanel will be reflected in FigJam.

A blog post from Sketch co-founders outlining their strategy for 2023 and beyond. After layoffs in October, they’ve refocused as a company and doubled down on their two-apps approach: “You shouldn’t have to learn how to use design tools to give feedback on designs, test a prototype, or inspect files for handoff. Meanwhile, designers should get an editing experience that speaks to their needs and workflows, without any distractions.”

They’ve also redesigned their website (looks fantastic!) and are launching the community forum on February 23rd. The primary focus is on polishing the apps and talking to users. One of the new Sketch features is support for opening .fig files — the tables have turned indeed.

A guide to using Tokens Studio to create flexible component libraries: “In headless design systems, the visual representation of components decouples from the logic required for their creation. Your building blocks gain UI after you apply tokens to them.”

I believe eventually starting work on top of a standard headless library will be normalized, similar to standard libraries in programming languages. How many times do we have to recreate all states of a button or create modals from scratch?

The team at Deliveroo built a library of “file management goodies” to bring more context to their designs and help people across the business navigate design files more efficiently. Section banners, flow and screen details, highlights, notes, and linked resources helped their team annotate their thinking within Figma.

Jackie Zhang writes about approaches to enhance team communication through logically structuring Figma files, labeling and annotating your designs, and hooking up all your files in a single FigJam flow. I particularly like the last recommendation and going to try it on the next project.

“Beginning February 2023, Figma will add support for paid files, plugins, and widgets on the Figma Community. Eligible creators will be able to publish paid resources and users will be able purchase resources directly from the Figma Community.” As a community creator, I’m genuinely excited about this — I’ve had a few commercial plugin ideas in the past, but was put off by handling payments.

That said, the announcement raised some questions. All community files must switch to Figma’s payment platform, but existing plugins and widgets may continue to be sold through 3rd-party payment sites. Rogie provided additional details in his Twitter thread.

Now it’s easier to track changes to components and styles. A new icon shows when styles or instances have changed, lets you accept changes for individual instances or layers, and even shows a before vs. after preview! See a quick demo by Jacob Miller.

Ever wanted to collaborate in FigJam using virtual reality? A note from the developer: “We wouldn’t build a better tool than Figma, so we used their super SDK to write a plugin that integrates with our XR application. We develop our applications for Snapdragon Spaces technology, available for Lenovo A3 glasses, as well as for Quest 2 and Quest Pro. We use Unity technology, so in the future the app can be open on any device like Android/iOS/MagicLeap/Quest etc. The app is still a prototype, but we consider of going forward and release it in some day.”