Thread by @figmadesign

It’s the coldest of takes that as a designer you have to learn to constantly switch between thinking of big things and considering details. ⁝ MW

The former is crucial, but the details can make or break a product. On the other hand, details can also suffocate you – there are endless small fixes, torrents of bugs, and infinite polish that could be applied to anything… but there is never infinite time.

As a result, you need to develop a sense of which details matter, and which not… and constantly seek input on your calibration.

With that in mind, I want to share a few incredibly tiny things that we’ve fixed recently in Figma’s editor, and why I think they matter – if not in isolation, then when they all start adding up. But I’m curious how you feel!

①
We’ve recently enabled Copy As PNG as an option when using Figma in the browser (it was previously only available in the app).

Why it matters: Copy/paste is one of the most crucial functions. We’re constrained here in many ways by the web platform, but we’re trying to constantly improve. (Stay tuned for more. 🤫)

②
When you paste an image when text editing, Figma used to ignore it. Now, it exits text editing and pastes it.

Why it matters: Figma is a professional tool, and we want people to be able to move very fast. It can be annoying if it‘s obvious what needs to happen, but the tool ignores your intention because you happen to be in the wrong mode.

③
When you tried to pan over the canvas, but your cursor happened to be on top of a link pop-up, nothing would happen. Now panning should work as expected.

Why it matters: This felt like one of those proverbial paper cuts, since panning needs to be fluid no matter what. Alas, the web platform doesn’t yet have a way to say “be visible to clicks, but invisible to scrolling.” Fortunately, we have great engineers that found a way!

④
It wasn’t previously possible to click with a middle mouse button on a link in a pop-up to open it. Now it works properly.

Why it matters: Many people use mice with a middle button, and expect Figma to work like links work elsewhere. (At least to the extend it makes sense – we already had to make links a bit different…)

Why it’s interesting: There are so many ways people interact with Figma – keyboard, mice, trackpads, touch. The new iPads even allow you to do all of the above at the same time!

Related to this:

Some people hold Z and then drag a rectangle to zoom in on a specific area. (It’s actually really cool!)

We used to show that rectangle to others who were in the file. Some people found it confusing – those rectangles move fast and then disappear.

Why it matters: We want people to be comfortable collaborating with others in the file – see all the fun new features in FigJam like reactions and cursor chatting! – rather than scared of it or confused by it.

Why it’s interesting: Figma was built to share as much over multiplayer by possible, so we actually had to prevent it from doing what it eagerly wanted to!

We’ve been there before a few times; I once wrote about Selection Colors with a similar challenge:

https://twitter.com/mwichary/status/1250128070658281474

⑥
There were previously some instances where the little iconic representation of your object in the layer pane didn’t update when you changed the object. It should be all good and fixed now.

Why it matters: If your design tool can’t properly do a common tiny thing, would you trust it to do more complex things?

(By the way, kudos to @msfeldstein, @jessieteaa, @sawyerhood, @katiesjiang, @LinzhiQ, @lbudorick, @anniehumanbean, @jackiechuichui, and others for their hard work fixing those things and many more!)

@msfeldstein @jessieteaa @sawyerhood @katiesjiang @LinzhiQ @lbudorick @anniehumanbean @jackiechuichui ⑦
Scrubbing font size by holding ⌥ and moving your mouse in Safari was broken. It should work now (and in a bunch of other fields).

Why it matters: Scrubbing is a very useful feature, and it should be consistent across browsers.

Why it’s interesting: This was actually a Safari bug, not a Figma bug! Safari fixed it not long ago.

Sometimes we have to wait for browser vendors like this – and we are in close contact with them to talk about how to solve a few issues and make Figma feel even more awesome.

⑧
If a text node had mixed styles inside, we didn’t correctly allow you to press + to override it with one colour or style. It should work now.

Why it matters: Quickly resolving and overriding mixed states is very important in everyday work – otherwise you have to select much more carefully, which is often no fun.

(Mixed states are really hard to make work well on the inside. We have a Mixed States Style guide that helps us figure out what to do, and you can even see Selection Colors as an interesting UI put together to help handling complex mixed states related to colours.)

⑨
The top chevron was hard to click. We made it easier.

Why it matters: Fitts’s Law is old, but still very, very relevant! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s…

These are the bugs we fixed only recently. I’m sharing them in part also because I hope you hold us accountable for things like these – we appreciate you reporting even tiny things if they feel in the way of your work or your state of flow.

And to wrap up this small thread, here are a few more stories of impactful design details I found in history, going all the way back to 1847. Small details that matters can inspire long past their expiration date: vimeo.com/209179824