I’ve been looking for this for a while now too. I would love to see some sort of instance counter on the main component (just like resizing modes/dimensions) with a link on it to open more component properties, not sure if that would be an overkill tho.
I run a plugin called Instance Finder (which is surprisingly fast for the library I use), but I would also love to see some previews organized into a grid, rather than having to navigate through all of the instances scattered across the frames.
This looks like a nice feature for a plugin I’m working on called Component Variance Authority (named after TVA from Loki TV show 🙂)
Do you mind clarifying what you mean by “resizing modes/dimensions”?
@Saulo_Vallory sorry for the late response. I was referring to the tag that shows up underneath the selected component. Ideally it could open a review dialog with an option to step through all the instances just as in the “review updates” flow (except it could be a much smaller dialog—close would take you back to the main component).
Or eventually the link could run a search with the string (in this case “Button”) prefilled and the “Instance” filter preselected.
Hey @Tibor, no worries about the reply time, it wasn’t long at all!
A plugin can’t add the link you want, but it can provide a command that runs with a keyboard shortcut and shows a list of instances in a list, like the window on the right. It can also focus the editor on the instance place as you step through each one in the list.
I think it can also show a preview, but the preview would have no context around it, just the instance. So I think zooming into the instance is a better solution.
I’m launching a plugin called Component Variance Authority (have you seen the Loki TV show?)
Anyways, the company helps you vary a component. If you build a component in the cascading style (using instances of other components as some of the layers), the plugin lets generate all of its possible variations for documentation and places them in a nice grid.
But you can also turn it into a component set with the possible variations as actual variants. The advantage of that is that you can ensure only valid combinations of property values are possible (by filtering rules)
But that’s just v0.1. My goal is to really turn the plugin into a toolset for design exploration and saving time on every repetitive task involving components and variants.
Sorry for the long post, but I really liked your idea and I’m adding it to the feature backlog, so I thought I would ask you to pick your brain on this.
So, what do you think about the plugin? Is it useful? What are your pain points today when dealing with components, variants, and instances?
