Ridd shares a few repeatable steps to start prototyping with variables — creating the variable you need, assigning the variable to the UI, testing the connection, and setting up your triggers.

Dave Williames made a next-level prototype using variables. The experimental pixel art editor uses over 40 variables to draw on a 16×16 grid with 16 colors, add frames, and play them with adjustable speed! Absolutely mind-blowing.

I rely on Luis for thought-provoking organization and design systems insights. In this thread, he discusses a way to translate brand colors into primitive and semantic color scales. At work, I use two design systems — one made by a smaller team where the same designers control the brand, design system, and product, and another from a larger organization with these are separate functions. I can see how his approach of explicitly using brand colors in primitives can work well in larger orgs.

Have ​“ghost” variables in your file and need to get rid of them easily? Here is how to easily detach deleted variables still lurking in your file, as explained by Miggi.

Molly Hellmuth shares a few tips from her recent talk ​“Design System Traps & Pitfalls” at Smashing Conference. Here are the five ways to de-risk variable adoption for your design system — create a map for your token structure, start using variables with numbers only, use variables and color styles together, stress-test new features, and roll out changes gradually.

An interesting idea on using a composite style with an alpha channel for a hover state instead of creating variables for every variant. Won’t work in every case, but it was interesting to learn that the same overlay approach is used in Material 2.

Organizations can require approval for using plugins and widgets, and now Akbar shows a new way to request it straight from the plugin’s popup. They’ve also made it easier for admins to review the requests. (If you’re a plugin author, consider specifying networkAccess in the manifest.)

I shared the teaser in issue #132, but last week Builder​.io introduced Visual Copilot, ​“a completely reimagined version of the Builder Figma-to-code plugin that will save developers 50–80% of the time they spend turning Figma designs into clean code.” The major difference between Visual Copilot and previous design-to-code tools is a specialized AI model that was trained to solve this problem. The features include one-click conversion, automatic responsiveness, extensive framework and library support, customizable code structures, and easy integration with the existing codebase.

One of the most exciting parts of this announcement is still in private beta and targeted at teams with well-maintained design systems. This feature in Visual Copilot uses AI to map reusable components in your Figma file to those in your code repository and generates code using your existing components when you have them. This could be genuinely useful to get the first rough version ready in no time.

In addition to setting the default role, admins can get email notifications to keep track of who has upgraded and what action led to their upgrade.

A new setting for more control over billing in Figma — admins can set the default role for anyone joining their Figma account to be editor, viewer, or viewer-restricted.

“Join this learning session where we will share tips and address questions around how to onboard your engineers to Dev Mode. We’ll cover how to adjust your workflows to get the most of our new features, setting up your files and design system, and onboarding your developers.”

Ridd is back with a video and a thread on choosing the right variable types for updating the state of components.

“Demystify the synergy between Figma Variables, Figma Styles, and Tokens Studio — a trio of ways composed to develop your design token workflow.”

A smart way to utilize line-wrapping in Auto Layout to achieve word highlighting effect.

Alright, so in the last issue, I wrote that ​“plugins for code generation in Dev Mode using GPT‑4 might provide an even better result.” It didn’t take long for a better example! Ben shows a new feature in Sidekick AI (using GPT‑4) for dropping a link to a frame in a Figma file to improve the code generation and even fix visual bugs. This looks freaking amazing.

Last week at Zoomtopia 2023, Figma announced its Figma for Zoom app, enabling teams to collaborate on Figma design files or use a FigJam whiteboard via Zoom. Users will no longer need to share their screens or switch tabs, instead gaining increased interactions and face-to-face collaboration. Zoom users will be able to install the new Figma for Zoom app from the Zoom marketplace on October 16, 2023.

New ways to manipulate colors and glyphs in Figma, coming directly from the team. #18: Two new blend modes that are most applicable to designing for iOS, as explained by Rogie — plus darker (linear burn) and plus lighter (linear dodge). Now we can do a classic dodge and burn! #19: Scrubbable inputs in color pickers. Use your mouse to drag or ​“scrub” individual fields to get precise control over your colors. #20: Alpha values in color inputs will be applied to the color’s opacity. #21: When outlining a stroke within a text node, the text is now converted into a group of vector nodes, one per text glyph.

New frame presets and device frames for iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max. Moreover, Keeyen created vector iPhones for prototyping and shared them with the community.

“In this livestream Hanju Kim and Marvin Messenzehl from RTL+ dive into the file to understand the intricacies of designing for a wide array of platforms while maintaining impeccable structure and facilitating seamless collaboration.”

“Copy as PNG” is a lifesaver. I even use it when moving mockups to FigJam for presentation to keep things simple.