Two new articles in the UX Collective from Christine Vallaure, who graciously shared free “friend links” with Figmalion readers. The first one explores a new approach to creating responsive designs with variables and modes, whereby components automatically adapt to the screen size they are placed on and only resize within the provided breakpoints. In this case, variables automate which component gets displayed and set stops at certain minimum and maximum points to stay inside your breakpoint range. I had no idea that string variables can be used to select a variant of the component 🤯
Christine Vallaure reminds us of using Selection Colors for applying variables to multiple objects.
Tip: Quickly add #figma color variables. Don't select each element individually -make a bulk selection and jump to "Selection colors" at the end of your properties panel. Easy and efficient! This way, you ensure you don't miss any elements and can even out slight color imbalances pic.twitter.com/NZsHU9a16A
— Christine Vallaure (@moonlearning) July 31, 2023
At Smashing Meets Figma event, Christine Vallaure showed how to add real data to your Figma designs, and various ways to include Google Sheets and API data via Kernel.
Christine Vallaure wrote about one of the most under-the-radar new features of the Dev Mode — units conversion. Now, you can design with pixels and then translate them to rem or other relative units in code. (Thanks for sharing the friend link with Figmalion, Christine!)
Christine Vallaure recorded a comprehensive guide to setting up, connecting, and updating libraries.
Christine Vallaure shares a few practical prototyping techniques and advanced tips & tricks. They include using Auto Layout with Smart Animate, stateful transitions with sections, nesting prototypes, interactive components, and more. This video is also available as an article.
Christine Vallaure highlights some of Figma’s features and possibilities to help you build a design that aligns with code as much as needed and improve your teamwork.
Great article by Christine Vallaure on improving accessibility by using relative font sizes in CSS, and how to work around pixel-based sizes in Figma. While I always use a combination of rem and em units, I wasn’t familiar with the 62.5% CSS hack or that units can be switched during hand-off in Zeplin. Very cool!