Big update to Figma navigation! The rollout seems to still be in progress, as I’m seeing it only in one of my accounts. If you aren’t seeing it yet, here is another quick demo from Zander.

“We’re introducing a new left navigation bar in Figma Design, Draw, and Dev Mode to make it easier to move between library assets, variables, and search. To help you get familiar, we added labels, which you can toggle anytime in the View menu. Edge-to-edge variables authoring experience. See everything at a glance with the new full screen view that spans the entire width of the browser.”

Ana Boyer designs a web homepage, showcasing recently launched Figma Design and Draw features. ​“Learn how to create a text-inlay parallax hero using Remove background and Isolate object, apply Glass effects, expand an image within a grid, generate illustrations via AI prompts, and add Draw texture effects.”

Christine Vallaure walks readers through her Figma workflow — how she combines everything, thinks through a project, and turns all those features into a working and maintainable file.

Nikolas Klein, PM at Figma: ​“Now you can copy any design from a Figma Make preview to the design canvas, allowing you to edit, iterate, and take your ideas further.” To make this possible, Figma purchased the technology behind a popular html.to.design plugin from my friends at <div>RIOTS. As part of this partnership, they will keep building and maintaining their plugins and tools independently, including html.to.design.

In this livestream, James McDonald iterates on Ridd’s design for Inflight and talks through design decisions in real time. Nice peek at how product polish actually happens.

Tom Johnson suggests we need to go from Canvas → Make to Make → Canvas → Make, so we could prompt the rough parts of the app and then use those scrappy elements to design all of the different canvases for the flow or feature, then feed those back into the Make workflow.

A new official free course for beginners: ​“This course will walk you through the entire process of creating a website design for a personal portfolio website. We’ll start by teaching you the fundamental concepts and features that Figma Design offers, and then we’ll go on a creative journey together to make a website that you can customize to make your own using some of Figma’s most exciting features.”

Figma created an entire hands-on course on designing a portfolio website from scratch. ​“We’ll cover the basics like shapes, text, and frames, and tap into more advanced features like auto layout, components, and prototyping. By the end, you’ll be ready to start bringing your own ideas to life.”