33% faster file loading and 33% fewer memory issues! ​“To ensure even the largest Figma design files can be used as efficiently as possible, Figma dynamically loads pages. When a file is opened, only the page that you land on is loaded (usually the first page in a file). This means a file with hundreds of pages can open as quickly as a file with just a few! Figma loads additional pages as you navigate to them. If an unloaded page is particularly complex, you may experience a brief pause when you navigate to the page.” Certain actions like searching across all pages, reviewing updates, or running a plugin or widget that needs the whole file may cause the file to load all pages.

Huge performance boost. See this Twitter thread from Bersabel Tadesse, Director of Product at Figma, on the journey to shipping this release: ​“Our architecture was built around files being the atomic unit of work, but users were treating pages as their atomic unit of work. So it didn’t make sense to keep optimizing within the current architecture—or worse, try and change how our users work.”

Throughout May, drafts are being moved into teams on the Starter and Professional plans. This change was poorly communicated and caused a public outcry, but I don’t actually think it’s unfair or a big deal. Historically, drafts haven’t been associated with a team. This made work ownership unclear, and teams couldn’t use advanced paid features like Dev Mode while working on drafts. Moving forward, drafts will be associated with a team, and existing files will need to be moved. Drafts stay private and can be shared view-only for free, but users will need paid seats to share drafts with others and to edit other teammates’ drafts. The free plan still includes 3 collaborative design files. This change puts a limit on teams collaborating in drafts but feels more like closing a loophole than a dark pattern.

Changes to sharing and access settings ​“to create a more consistent sharing experience and give you clearer visibility into and control over content permissions,” being released through mid-June. New team access terminology, clarified UI for inheriting project access by the team members and child file access by the project members, a dedicated prototype share dialog, a branch’s audience and role, and a central place for sharing other forms, views, and artifacts of the file. (Pre-Config cleanup for something new?)

“We are starting to roll out an easier way to mark frames ready for dev. Select a frame to see the </> icon appear at the top right, then click. You’ll see the ready for dev status also reflected in your selection actions.”

Minor but helpful change to the color picker — limit the options only to the current page.

Two Software Engineers at Figma — Isaac Goldberg and Naomi Jung — explain how dynamic page loading improved the slowest load times by 33%. ​“Performance should correspond to user-perceived complexity. If a user loads a page with only a few frames, Figma should be able to display their canvas almost instantly, even if the file has dozens of other pages with hundreds of frames each. By examining usage patterns, we learned that many users were treating files as projects — using one file to house all aspects of a workstream — so most didn’t even navigate to all pages in a single session. We realized that we could drastically improve load times and reduce memory by dynamically loading content as needed, rather than populating all content at once.”

Finally, a solid color picker that lets you control color in LCH for both fills and strokes! ​“This simple color picker allows you to use the LCH color space in your designs with ease. The LCH color space is perceptually uniform and significantly simplifies creating and modifying color systems.”

In addition to setting a single color with the plugin above, this one defines color scales: ​“Use this Plugin to generate Color Palettes with Variations in the OKLCH Color Space. The shades can vary across Lightness, Chroma, Hue. The ability to control these individual parameters makes it perfect for building palettes to be used in interface design, because you can use the shades that vary in these parameters to establish hierarchy, contrast, attention, etc.”

Official map symbols and patterns used by the National Park Service. NPS symbols are free and in the public domain. They derive from the Ultimate Symbol Collection, a commercial product that offers hundreds of additional symbols.

A collection of attractive geometric backgrounds, ​“generated by Human with AI”. Available for free for personal, studio, and commercial use.

Not a new article, but a good one by Josh Comeau. ​“Scope cuts are generally decided by product managers, but they don’t make that decision alone. It often starts with a conversation between the designer and the developer. If these two people trust each other, the process is collaborative, cordial, and productive. They figure out the best solution under the current constraints, taking development time and user experience into account, and then pitch it to the PM. If the PM trusts the designer and developer, and their proposed solution works from a product perspective, it’s typically approved without any fuss.”

What I like about Linear is how clearly they define principles and ideas that drive their product decisions. You can either love or hate how opinionated they are, but that clarity is admirable. ​“At Linear we believe software can feel magical. Quality of software is driven by both the talent of its creators and how they feel while they’re crafting it. To bring back the right focus, these are the foundational and evolving ideas Linear is built on.”