Tweets
Connector tool stays selected
Stay in the diagram flow, with Connector tool (X) now persisting by default; hit Esc or V to return to the Move tool.
Next up, we made the connector tool persistent! No more creating one connector at a time, place all your shapes on the board, then connect and adjust with connectors all in one go! When you’re done, just hit Esc or V. pic.twitter.com/3jb2uB1Bca
— Peter Damrongpiriyapong (@peterdpong) August 2, 2022
Quick create improvements
Create shapes and stickies faster with new auto-create prompts at the top, bottom, left, and right.
I’m thrilled today to show off what I’ve been working on @figma — making diagramming more fluid in FigJam
— Peter Damrongpiriyapong (@peterdpong) August 2, 2022
First up are improvements to Quick Create! We now try to avoid overlapping with existing objects and made sure Quick Create indicators are always shown for fast diagramming! pic.twitter.com/OUARJDrtlZ
File Search improvements
Search preview now includes recent searches and a list view shows file owners.
After recently joining the @Figma product team in June, I’m super excited to share a few fun improvements to the search experience 🔎 that we’re launching today as part of Little Big Updates! pic.twitter.com/HjOy6ezMPt
— Manosai Eerabathini (@manosaie) August 2, 2022
Quick align as a group
No more group/align/ungroup — quickly align objects as a temporary group by holding Shift while pressing alignment buttons. (Option/Alt also seems to work.)
One of my favorite little big updates to drop in @figma this week is the ability to align objects as if they were a group.
— miggity miggity mac (@miggi) August 4, 2022
Hold the option (alt) key when hovering over the alignment icons to align selected objects together within their frame.
More here: https://t.co/8ZWii0Kcl2 pic.twitter.com/GbSnU5u2UB
Improved emoji support
Not mentioned in the blog post, but a very timely and important update!
We know it’s been too long — emojis have been updated in @figma (~1000 added)! While we were at it, we also improved the rendering, quality, and ease of future updates. Emoji on 🙌 pic.twitter.com/ayoAl5DwGS
— Qi Linzhi (@LinzhiQ) August 4, 2022
Annotate with a Pencil tool
Annotation is a lot smoother with Pencil strokes no longer getting clipped or disturbing Auto Layout in frames. See also Marcin Wichary’s short thread on how they got to this solution.
Sometimes I feel happier about the little fixes than the giant new features. Using the pencil tool in clipped or AutoLayout frames pretty much always did the Wrong Thing. Thanks to @mwichary for talking through all the little edge cases with me. pic.twitter.com/XKhuxXpjrX
— Michael Feldstein (@msfeldstein) August 2, 2022
Redistribute gradient steps evenly
One of my personal favorites 🙌 Organize the gradient panel faster by double-clicking on gradient stops to evenly distribute them.
This past maker week @figma I had some extra hours and worked on adding the ability to equally distribute gradient stops with a simple double click.
— trevor aquino 😶🌫️😰 (@TrevorAquino) August 2, 2022
However this wasn't my own idea. One of my favorite parts of Figma is being able to interact with the community of users.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/Pik8GXWyjy
Preserving the color of a swapped icon
Rogie comes to the rescue and explains how to preserve a fill color when icons are overridden and swapped. It’s worth keeping a layer name consistent across icons in the library if you plan to use them in different colors.
To get icon colors to preserve when they are overridden and swapped, you need to make sure that your layer names are the same. You'll see in this gif that add_circle and add_shopping_cart have the same layer name...that's how Figma knows to apply the override as you swap. pic.twitter.com/io8DZFtgBQ
— ˗ˏˋrogieˎˊ (@rogie) July 29, 2022
Moving the selection
Miggi with a mind-blowing trick for selecting items inside of the tight spots.
Haven't posted a #FigmaTip in a while, so here goes.
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) July 28, 2022
In @figma, draw a selection then hold the space bar to move the selection over the objects you want to select. Great for getting items inside of those tight spots. 🎉 pic.twitter.com/zEcCb90Jyk
Designing curved carousels
Zander Whitehurst shows how to create a cool interactive carousel in Figma. See also his quick video “Wireframe to Landing page” where he uses that carousel in a landing page design.
🎠 Designing curved carousels in @figma, supafast! pic.twitter.com/lcYnvc8dCM
— Zander Whitehurst (@zander_supafast) July 27, 2022
Accessible text color
Never noticed this before, but it’s such a nice touch! 👏
Shoutout to @figma for determining the background color of a shape and automatically setting the text color as black or white depending on contrast ratios to ensure accessibility. pic.twitter.com/ST1vTpf1Dc
— Emma Bostian (@EmmaBostian) July 21, 2022
Capturing feedback
Post-it notes are great for gathering and organizing feedback. (I often use comments as to-do’s, but also copy a post-it note from FigJam to my Figma files for higher visibility and questions.)
I capture all feedback in my @figma design file using sticky notes. I review all the feedback and make a list of revisions to bring into the next design round. I keep meticulous track of everything, so there is visible history. pic.twitter.com/S3f7a8xlpu
— Jess 🇺🇦 (@jesseddy) July 19, 2022
Stamp name tags
Nice improvement! Too bad I can’t stamp +1 on my ideas ten times anymore… BTW, there is a cool easter egg on really old stamps.
we launched stamp name tags in @figma's FigJam today 🤸♀️ (psst... no more +1'ing your own ideas!!!!!)
— mihika kapoor 🧃 (@mihikapoor) July 14, 2022
so delightful to see this lil big detail out in the world 💖 pic.twitter.com/sOvviJK1Zx
“Sketch shined a light on UX design”
I’m not a big fan of Sketch’s “Sketch vs Figma” page, but I had a big laugh over this. Highly resourceful.
Figma vs Sketch vs 🥊 Sketch vs Figma pic.twitter.com/pmIY68uOqT
— Valentin Chrétien 🇺🇦 (@valentinchrt) July 5, 2022
Five best practices for component props
Ridd shares five awesome strategies for using component properties: strategic nesting, progressive disclosure, minimizing decisions, emojis, and streamlining the instance swap.
These two components might LOOK the same...
— Ridd 🏛 (@Ridderingand) July 6, 2022
But they couldn't be more different:
• ✅ One crushes component props
• ❌ One creates a nightmare
5 best practices for component props 👇 pic.twitter.com/x3ooMihZMp
Adjust mixed values
Cool tip on adjusting mixed values like object size or Auto Layout padding.
I never knew you could adjust mixed values in Figma like this pic.twitter.com/8bmMRJb0iT
— Joey 🙃 (@mrhammn) June 30, 2022
Toggle between panels
Useful shortcuts to toggle between Design, Prototype, and Inspect panels.
⌨️ Figma Tip: use Shift-E to quickly toggle between the Design and Prototype tabs, or ⌥8 for Design, ⌥9 for Prototype, and ⌥0 for Inspect.
— Figmalion (@figmanewsletter) June 23, 2022
International keyboard layouts
Figma is improving support of international keyboards, currently in beta.
🇬🇧🇸🇪🇫🇮🇩🇰🇳🇴🇮🇹🇪🇸🌎
— KC Oh (@okaysee) June 30, 2022
We've added 8 more layouts (UK, SE, FI, DK, NO, IT, ES, LATAM) so more folks can work faster in @Figma.
It's been fun to dig into ⌨️ quirks with @mwichary @dorothchen @SulaYang1 + Rachel Miller!
Sign up here if you'd like to beta test: https://t.co/Jw7otaHDN4 pic.twitter.com/XKDrYIareE
Making widgets
Bersabel Tadesse, Product Manager at Figma, writes about building and releasing last week’s updates — Figma widgets, a new toolbar menu, Community improvements, and redesigned API docs.
Over the past few months, I've been working with some amazing people @figma on all of the updates we launched today, and I’m so happy to finally share them with you all! 🎉 https://t.co/Vwbm62ULNz
— bersabel (@brsabel) June 29, 2022
Spring board
Another cool artifact from William Wu’s work on spring animations.
I threw this together while working on @figma's new Spring Animations feature with @rickrajj and @nikolasklein. It's a quick HTML/CSS/JS prototype to help us explore the different kinds of animations that were possible.
— William Wu (@willyvvu) June 21, 2022
Each tile has a different animation which plays on hover. pic.twitter.com/lFByB9He8L