“When you have multiple vertices selected in vector edit mode, you can now type Mixed + [value] into the X or Y input box to add the same value to each vertex.”

After adding screen readers support to Figma prototypes last year, now it’s introduced to FigJam. With this update, screen reader or keyboard users can move focus around the canvas, as well as between different menus and screens, to create, edit, and read out content. I love how these improvements make FigJam better for everyone: ​“Users can now navigate FigJam files using the Tab key to jump between objects on the canvas, as well as between text nodes for efficient editing. Hold Shift-Tab to tab in reverse.”

The accessibility team also shared a few tips on making FigJam files more accessible: provide ​“alt” text to images, use Sections to group content, numbered lists to describe order, and underscores to communicate fill-in-the-blanks.

A big update to FigJam — custom templates for your team, stamp your teammates’ faces to files and tag them with @mentions, emoji picker opens by typing a colon (“:”), custom color palettes (coming soon), UserTesting and Great Question integrations, Productboard widget, and new tunes! Also, explore new world-class teams’ templates and see a thread by Cai on the Figma design team’s rituals and templates they use in daily work.

In addition to a bigger release, there are a bunch of good quality-of-life improvements: toggling between thin and thick markers with Command–B (lovely animation!), an addition of Paste to replace (Command–Shift–V) command to FigJam, and connecting two objects by simply clicking on one object followed by clicking on another.

“Navigate FigJam files without taking your hands off your keyboard by using the Tab key to jump between objects on the FigJam canvas, like sections, shapes, and stickies. You can also tab between text nodes while editing text to rapidly make edits across your file. Hold Shift + Tab to tab back in the reverse direction.”

Admins now can select all users in the Members table in the admin console. New customers in Japan, Europe, UK, and Canada who require invoicing can now purchase an Organization or Enterprise plan in the local currency or USD.

Now in FigJam, you can access face stamps from anyone in your organization and add them to your FigJam file. Browse available face stamps in the More menu and easily change an existing face stamp to another teammate’s face. (Available on teams on the Organization and Enterprise plans.)

Amazing intro video of the 5x faster comment replies in the updated mobile apps. See also the comparison of performance before and after this release.

Is this an important update? No. But is it fun? Hell yes! The FigJam team keeps delivering the most delight per buck.

While I don’t often prototype interactions, I love the demo of all the use cases in this thread by Ana Boyer! Engineer Jediah Katz is also dropping some tips and tricks and Zander Whitehurst made a cool demo. Don’t miss the sticky scrolling playground file as well.

I hope this is the first step to batching all comments into a daily digest for lower-priority files 🤞

Now you can align layers with layers inside a component instance. Check out the thread by Tom Lowry and don’t miss his detailed spec for different scenarios!

Nice! Markdown FTW.

Honestly, I always assumed that SVG bugs are just a part of the game and will always be here — not a surprising conclusion when 49% of imported SVGs relied on buggy features. In retrospect, it was a silly assumption considering SVG is one of only a few open vector formats. In this fantastic thread, Figma engineer Lauren Budorick shows how much work went into detecting, analyzing, and fixing these bugs. I didn’t realize that luminance mask support was a part of this work as well, and Miggi is already exploring creative applications for composited motion visuals in prototypes.

Component properties v2 are out of beta with the ability to bubble up and expose properties of nested instances. It’s also now possible to define a list of preferred instances for swapping. Great for selecting a subset of a larger icons library or working with card components.

“You can now more confidently approve library updates with a visual preview of the changes and the ability to apply them to individual instances and layers.” I don’t even know how I’ve dealt with the stress of accepting library changes sight unseen in the past.

While color and layer blend modes have the most noticeable previews, this update is a part of the larger initiative for adding previews to all settings. Previews were already added to Effects, and the team is considering supporting boolean ops, component props, and the font picker.

My guess is we’ll see hanging punctuation in the wild more often now. (Good luck, developers.)

The timing of this release is impeccable — just a couple of months ago WebKit added support for leading-trim CSS property to Safari Technology Preview (although other browsers are not rushing). For a deeper dive into why it’s important, see Leading-Trim: The Future of Digital Typesetting by Ethan Wang from Microsoft.

A beautifully presented shortlist of 11 out of 32 ​“little big updates”.

See also Molly Hellmuth’s top 10. Below is my personal shortlist, which is a little different.