What's the plan for Variables at Figma?

+1
Variables are still very much WIP despite being officialy out of beta. They are riddled with bugs (publishing not saved, need to reload the tab; dropdown flickering issues), usability issues (impossible to move variables, to navigate to aliases), conceptual shortcomings (very hard to have more than one mode, Collections can’t be used as folders, there’s a conflict between using variants or variables for responsive display) and straight-up lacking features (% for line-height, math in variables).

All of which would be fine if the feature was still in beta, which it’s not.

Actually asked a similar question on the reddit just recently and got a reply about Extended Collections here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigmaDesign/comments/1dtju75/where_did_extended_collections_go/lbbmz3l/?context=3

Glad to hear they’re working on those, but there are several minor-big problems that could be fixed in the meantime, like collection folders and completing typography variables 😕 hopefully they’ll release them in the near future

Ofc… but improving on existing features seems pretty low priority for them at the moment.

I mean, in the year that followed Config 23 we only got a half-baked solution for typeopgraphy variables that essentially just enabled the input fields for some existing variable types and didn’t bother to support the most common ways to use type (% line heights etc.) while still fording people to define everything in styles.

+1 We have a small team at the company I work for but we manage 11 brands. without variables its an staggering amount of work, whilst implementing variables in our own system, its lacking some basic things that would make our lives so much easier. And its seems to be riddled with bugs also.

I would like to see some quality of life updates too for import/export/copy/paste, even with the current architecture. Easily copy a full collection, a mode column, some variable rows, some selected value cells from one file to another using simple cmd+C/V, like using google sheet. If this works then — basically we are talking about tables — let me paste cells from google sheet, where I can calculate some values and I could then easily update multiple values in just a few clicks.