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romuald
New Participant
June 20, 2024
Question

Dropdown menu component - a try

  • June 20, 2024
  • 12 replies
  • 1226 views

Hi there.
I’m trying to figure out how I can design a dropdown menu component which is not affected by the layers stacking order.

Actually, my design system is a kind of a lot of Russian dolls, with component instance customization everywhere.

I’ve created a little sandbox file to demonstrate what’s possible, it’s here:

Figma – 19 Jun 24

The stacking order indicator is made by the red rectangle.

On the left, a dropdown menu which is affected by the layer stacking order, but has some advantages : auto-layout can adjust the menu width…convenient.

On the right: the same dropdown menu but this one is not affected by the stacking order. Nice but some problems:

  • the overlay is not managed by the same auto-layout of the selector, so difficult to make its width easily affected
  • Look at the position of the overlay in the prototype interaction → totally impossible to figure out how to set the position of the overlay…or there is something I didn’t catch

Feel free to comment, share your thoughts, ideas, etc.
Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.

12 replies

romuald
romualdAuthor
New Participant
June 24, 2024

Yes I know.

But you’re right, considering the current Figma capabilities, the best way is to use an overlay and setup the interactions at the prototype level, not on the component itself.

June 27, 2024

Hi my way of making interactive dropdown components is to use the position absolute option inside the component for the list element and the swap instance option for the ability to dynamically swap lists. So i don’t need overlay option because all the interaction takes place inside my component.

To avoid overlapping elements it is worth changing the Canvas stacking options to “first on top” for the autolayout parent.

Screen Recording 2024-06-27 at 12.57.03