Tweets

Change Starting Frame in a prototype

Nifty little time-saver.

Did you know about this @figmadesign shortcut? I just discovered it and it's handy when working on complex documents 🤓 pic.twitter.com/v9hYzU37aE
— Adrián Mato 🐙 (@adrianmg) December 1, 2020

Issue #29
Dec 13, 2020
#Prototyping

Animate Angular gradient strokes

And another tip from Miguel for making simple animated spinners.

Figma @figmadesign protip: You can animate Angular gradients strokes. Make a simple loading animation by rotating the angle of the Angular gradient on a shape's stroke.

s/o to @annehelliott for the question & @BenMendelsohn for the rectangle. pic.twitter.com/aXe1y2DAak
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) December 10, 2020

Hiding only Layers panel

Miguel Cardona with a good tip: use Cmd-Shift-\ to hide the Layers panel, and Cmd-\ to hide both panels when sharing a screen.

Figma @figmadesign Protip... If you ever want to hide just your layers but keep the properties panel on the right when screen sharing (cuz layers be looking rough sometimes)... just hide only them `Command + Shift + \`

(You can also hide everything with `Command + \`) pic.twitter.com/MMggw86d0A
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) December 3, 2020

Using ScrollTo Interactions to traverse spaces

As soon as Figma releases something new, Miguel Cardona comes up with a great use case.

Yo @figmadesign coming through with the holiday treats!!! ScrollTo Interactions in prototyping solves a problem I've been having for a while...wanting to traverse spaces!

Here is something I whipped up in 5min. I set up an underlying grid of instances to form a grid of targets. pic.twitter.com/3jFGLT4Pqz
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) December 8, 2020

Geometric Shapes

Cool patterns and face mask by Toni Gemayel.

From @figmadesign file to face mask pic.twitter.com/aw7GFSUmLV
— Toni Gemayel (@tonigemayel) November 18, 2020

Text underline hack

Cool Auto Layout hack for creating custom text underlines.

Ever wanted to do sweet little link styles in figma like different colored underlines or even backgrounds that still obey auto-layout? @rogie taught me this neato trick. https://t.co/OSNaBoUyaq
— Matthew (@whale) November 25, 2020

Magic Layout concept

A plugin concept by Jordan Singer for automatically applying Auto Layout constraints and resizing.

Magic Layout plugin concept for Figma ✨

Automatically apply Auto Layout constraints and resizing to your layers. pic.twitter.com/stWNvOIFiu
— jordan singer (@jsngr) November 22, 2020

Animating new Auto Layout options

Miguel Cardona shows how the “Fill container” resizing option can be animated.

Like, I'm just getting started with it, so use a little imagination here, but the fact that you can smart animate new @figmadesign auto-layout options will save a ton of time.

Here the only difference between the frames is the "fill container" option on the middle doodad. pic.twitter.com/TBnDj3ctru
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) November 19, 2020

Two ways to size and distribute spacing

Tom Lowry shows how resizing and distributing spacing (Packed vs. Space Between) works.

#FigmaTip: Heres a quick tip with two different ways to size/distribute spacing using the latest updates to Auto Layout in @figmadesign. Hope you all like it! pic.twitter.com/LxE8Yz19vc
— Tom Lowry (@negativespaceca) November 19, 2020

How Auto Layout works with child layers

Rogie explains hug, fixed, and fill resizing options. The demo of building a to-do list and a table with Auto Layout is really impressive!

Here's a quick run-down on how @figmadesign's improved Auto Layout works with child layers:

≺≻ Fill
≻≺ Hug
⊢⊣ Fixed#FigmaTip pic.twitter.com/2SBx8qkVTV
— ˗ˏˋrogieˎˊ (@rogie) November 20, 2020

Styling the wrapper around Variants

One of the unexpected features, but can be useful when organizing your design system.

Neat, you can style the wrapper around variants in @figmadesign pic.twitter.com/a21pO8YQ7K
— Steve Ruiz (@steveruizok) November 2, 2020

Rogie: 3 new features to ease communication with your developers

Rogie demonstrates a few recent improvements to the Inspect tab.

A #TotallyRadFigmaTip for you — I cover 3 new features to ease communication with your developers:

🔥 Documentation Link field (just dropped!)
✨ "Parent Component" inspect panel area
✨ Animation panel inspect panel area#FigmaTips

Here's how to do it in @figmadesign: pic.twitter.com/U9cHlxT7Rg
— ˗ˏˋrogieˎˊ (@rogie) November 3, 2020

Miguel Cardona: Duplicate line segments

Great tip! Other replies to Rogie’s original tweet are also worth checking out.

Duplicate line segments while holding the option key, and click-dragging. And Shift + X to swap fill and stroke. pic.twitter.com/J8XWZlQlG9
— miggi from figgi (@miggi) October 26, 2020

Luis Ouriach: Dark mode in Figma

Damn, that actually works surprisingly well in Chrome. Too bad it forces dark mode on all other websites as well.

Dark mode in @figmadesign?

Sure 🕴

––––––––––––––––––––––––

Jump into chrome://flags/ and search for Dark Mode.

You can thank @neversitdull for finding this beauty. pic.twitter.com/Fcl6lHKuhq
— luis. (@disco_lu) October 20, 2020

Issue #26
Nov 1, 2020
#Luis Ouriach

Luis Ouriach: Rearrange items with the little pink dot

Don’t miss a response from Nikolas Klein, showing how to resize objects while respecting the distance between them.

Little #figmatip to head into the weekend.

I only just found out that you can rearrange items with the little pink dot on your selected components / Frames / shapes.

🤯 pic.twitter.com/PGwIfVw04t
— luis. (@disco_lu) October 16, 2020

Rogie: Preserve icon colors when you swap out icons

Using a Union boolean operator to preserve colors is a mind-blowing hack! 🤯

Here it is. A workaround for your buttons to preserve icon colors when you swap out icons.

This has been another #TotallyRadFigmaTip from ya boi.

Here's the @Figmadesign file: https://t.co/USmdie8ldt #figmatips #figmatip pic.twitter.com/bueqfLyVFS
— ˗ˏˋrogieˎˊ (@rogie) October 30, 2020

The Inspect panel was also updated this week to make translating design to code easier. Now it provides extra details like documentation, parent component, and animation behaviors. Watch a quick demo by Rogie.

We’re updating the Inspect panel so it’s even easier to translate designs → code. This week, you’ll start to see extra details like documentation, parent component, and animation behaviors.

Learn more ⤵️https://t.co/Qm5h7pXnnj
— Figma (@figma) October 28, 2020

Tobias Negele: Using Variants to clean up components in Polaris

Shopify used Variants to clean up their local design system for retail.

We’ve been playing around with variants in @figmadesign for a few weeks and leveraged the feature to clean up components in #Polaris for Retail, one of our local design systems. This makes it so much easier to choose and switch between variants. There’s no going back. @ShopifyUX pic.twitter.com/cmElLM23fB
— Tobias Negele (@tobiasnegele) October 27, 2020

Mattias Johansson: Using Variants in Spotify mobile design system

Another example from Spotify. Here, they moved from 36 to 4 track row components.

Had some fun playing with @figmadesign variants for our Spotify mobile design system. In this example, moving from 36 to 4 track row components, resulting in a much cleaner asset panel! ✨ Having both global and variant descriptions was a nice bonus! pic.twitter.com/V3tWdNfUa4
— Mattias Johansson (@mattiasjo) October 28, 2020

Juli SomBAT: Using Variants in Spotify web design system

In this example, they replaced 105 button components with just 3. (Sounds like they’ve been using Variants for a while, as Dylan Field used Spotify design system Encore to present the feature in his Config keynote.)

Psyched to integrate @figmadesign variants into our Spotify web design system. It's so much easier to use this way- we had 105 buttons components before and will now have 3! 🤯 pic.twitter.com/An3N0e6QiH
— Juli Sombat (@jsombat) October 28, 2020