“In this two part series, we’re using variables to build an advanced prototype of an interactive, configurable volume bar. Configurable prototypes are easily customized and adapted and allow us to edit and change interactions in less time. In this first video, we’re going to set up the foundation of our interaction.”

Christine Vallaure’s talk at last year’s SmashingConf on CSS Container Queries and how designers can tackle them using Figma. If videos are not your jam, see her article on Why UI designers should understand Flexbox and CSS Grid.

A new video in Luis Ouriach’s ​“My First Variable” series on the typography support within variables. He explains using string and number variables to set font weights, combining weights with styles such as italics, grouping text variables, aliasing font families, naming conventions, and more.

That’s not all! Now, you can also select multiple pages by holding Shift to rename, delete, or move them in bulk.

I fully expected all big product announcements to be saved for Config, but we have an unexpected treat! Jokes aside, this is a very elegant solution based on how people already organize their files. Reminds me of how Twitter came up with retweets and the book The Best Interface is No Interface.

“When you name a page in Figma using only hyphens, en/​em dashes, asterisks or spaces, that page will now automatically convert into a page divider.”

Elliot Tu from Zeplin interviewed me for their Design-to-Dev community interview series last week. We chatted about working on Figmalion, my new role, collaborating with developers, the future of design-to-dev tools, and how I use AI in my work.

Use the new ​“Set variable mode” prototype action to change the variable mode of the current page. See the new section in the help article or try it out in an updated Advanced prototyping playground file.

“The Library Analytics API, part of the Figma REST API, lets you fetch analytics data about how your organization’s design system libraries are being used. The API provides similar information to the in-product library analytics feature, but in a format that you can use to do more fine-grained, custom analysis. In this video Gerard shows how to get started with the API, and shows how you might use the data.”

Gerard walks us through the Variables API, showing how it can keep values in sync with your code base and how applications such as StyleDictionary can transform them into usable code for multiple platforms. See the repository with GitHub Actions workflow examples.

Even while the new Dev Mode replaced the old Inspect panel, all information is still available regardless of your plan, seat type, or file access. This tutorial covers inspecting designs in Figma, depending on your plan and access level.

Niki Tonsky claims that ​“we, as a civilization, forgot how to center things.” As always, his essay gets into nitty-gritty design details in the most hilarious way. He explains how CSS, font metrics, and icons get in the way of centering things and what designers and developers can do about them.

Confusingly enough, this new plugin by Anh is unrelated to another plugin with the same name I shared in issue #160. See examples on Twitter and choose which one works best for your needs.

Scan local text styles, convert their properties into typographic variables, and bind them back to the text styles. Christine Vallaure recommends this plugin in her recent video and shows how to use it.

New plugin from Meng To: ​“AI Text Generator is a super handy Figma plug-in made for designers who want to rewrite their text in a couple of clicks. It uses OpenAI GPT‑4 to give you smart, creative text suggestions—think names, titles, or even Lorem Ipsum dummy text—right where you need them. It automatically detects the selected text’s length and generates the perfect amount of words for your alternatives. You can also add custom prompts, which is useful for more control, generate any type of text, in different languages and amount of words.”

Luis built a starter kit for system font stacks with 123 variables, including numbers and strings for font weights in CSS, SF Pro, Segoe UI, and Roboto fonts.

Christine Vallaure shows how to use typography variables and modes to create responsive typography across different screen sizes. The video also covers applying multiple modes at once and automated typeface changes, such as for iOS and Android setups.

Developer Advocate Jake explains some of the reasons why product experience can be misaligned between design and development. He points out that the source of truth can vary depending on the scenario, from the design system to the code in production to the design files. To find the truth, we have to ask a few questions: ​“What do we want?”, ​“What do we have?” and ​“What is the difference?”

Split tabs are now available in the desktop app! Miggi shows how to get the most out of them. Keeping split tabs with raw materials in FigJam while designing in Figma is surprisingly convenient and something I’ve been doing a lot this week.

That’s a pretty cool demo of how powerful the Generator plugin is. Impressive!

A short explainer on bringing SVGs from Figma to Rive, where you can build functional graphics with rich interactivity and animation.