LAUNCHED: Fixed panels are back!

Agreed 100%.

One of my biggest gripes is getting distracted with movement in the corner of my vision every time I move the canvas around, just because it looks cool to have “floating” panels.

I’m unsure why we need both floating panels on the left and right. The scroll bars are currently overlapping the UI, particularly noticeable in the right panel. It would be beneficial to allow users to choose between floating or non-floating panels. Placing the scroll bar within the side gap of the right panel would prevent it from overlapping with components. Additionally, the vertical ruler is positioned too far from the artboards, requiring users to drag it over the left side panel, which is inconvenient for me.

The gaps could also trigger events for neurodivergent users as the parts of the UI flash in the gaps when scrolling the artboards.

Thanks for the feedback, @Mike_Hone!

This is already on the UI3 team’s radar for improvement.

+1 to this. It’s visually noisy and it wastes space.

Immediately spent 20 minutes trying to find a way to turn it off.

+1 to this too - thank you.

This is incredibly distracting and is wasted space - please remove the gaps and fix them to the edges.

Agreed, the floating panels are very annoying and aren’t saving any space either. There is an annoying padding where design work peaks through and takes more time to work out where the edges are. The sticky panels on the left and right where much more inline with efficient complex application based UI which is what is required here (in my view). Also having the main controls on the bottom while the tab bar to navigate between files is on the top. I have found the need to continually move my eyes and cursor between the top and bottom of the window, whereas before all the controls and navigation where at the top in one place. After a day of trying the beta I’m moving back to the one UI. I also don’t see need for rounded corners either in this instance, it seems Figma are trying to unify the FigJam and Figma UIs, but I much prefer the efficient use of space and more concise UI in the previous version.

Totally agree. Additionally hiding/showing rulers makes the whole ui move. toolbar should be movable or you should be able to choose if you want it at the bottom or top.

Agree !!! We’re designing on webapp not mobile. This version is totally a copy of Webflow canvas.
Floating edge, space, these are really annoying and time-consuming. Please revert the old version

🫠

Just left feedback about this too. Terrible. Navigating layers was already fiddly with my screen size (I’m using a laptop), now even less screen real estate for my panels, and a bonus distraction with the edges flashing small bits of my designs as I pan around. Super distracting and feels like design for the sake of a redesign.

Agreed - they looked great on the pre release as a concept but in reality they’re a waste of space, with the exception of the tool bar at the bottom.

The only way this would make sense is if the panels were dynamic in some way - either shrinking or skewing perspective to save space when not in use and becoming active when you hover/move toward them…?

Something like the Mac OS dock hiding 👌

UI3’s floating panels feel like an attack on my workflows. I want Figma’s UI to be as compact and dense as possible, allowing my work to take up the rest of the space. I’ve already reverted to the old UI, but encourage you to adjust these floating sidepanels before rolling this out to everyone.

The new floating panels waste so much design space, the gaps between them and the edge of the screen are now wasted…

Hey All, thanks for the feedback and apologies for the frustration!

This is already on the UI3 team’s radar for improvement - stay tuned!

Respectfully adding my vote here. I’m not sure if there was a practical reason for it, but I agree with @Alan_Bauchop’s points. I find it adds visual noise / distraction at the periphery of my vision as I work on the canvas.

+1 to this, or allow the users to snap it in place.

+1

• Removing the padding feels like a no brainer.
• Gray font on gray boxes reduces contrast (this is no longer even WCAG level-AA conformant - this deserves a separate post)
• And are we using a smaller fonts to make up for that added padding?

New is always tough so I’m prepared to sit with things for a bit and hope this feels better soon but, on first impressions this visual update legitimately hurts my eyes.

I don’t get it why do we need that padding around panels? It’s a copy of Spline which is also bad.

I run dark mode for the UI but the background of my canvas is bright due to reasons - this makes the gap stand out so much that I quickly reverted to old UI. Its unbearable.

I don’t know that I would want such a feature.

but with the new floating panel, my instinctive movement was to try messing with them, what if I wish to be half the size of one, move it around, hide one but keep the other?
it looks like they can do wild things.

but they kind of don’t so it is a weird UI choice…

Please give us the option to dock the left & right panels.

The edge of the work area is part of your UI! The new floating panels change the workflow so much.

• The Ruler Tool is now weird because the left side of the ruler is appearing at the left of Panel 1 instead of at the left of the main work area.

• A lot of my tasks involve Select + Dragging to Scroll the page to select more elements. Before this is too easy to do. Just Drag your mouse past the edges of the Workarea. Now it’s harder, because the left & right edges of the workarea are at the leftmost and rightmost edges of the Figma Window.

WORKAROUND: Hide the panels, drag stuff, show the panels again.
TRUE SOLUTION: Allow panels to be truly docked.

RELATED IMPORTANT REQUEST:

• Please change the shortcut of Minimize/Restore UI to the TAB Key or BACKTICK “`” Key.
• Reason: I don’t want to lose my mouse hand just to press Shift+/ – especially if you need to do this often during presentations.

As for your changes in the Panel Contents, I have a few complaints, but generally I’m OK with them.

My pain point really are the floating panels.

Working with Docked Panels VS Floating Panels has a similar experience to working with Photoshop (Docked Panels) and GIMP (Floating Panels). It’s harder to manage the workspace because floating panels are generally annoying, obscures the view, and puts the edge of the workspace to the very edges of the Figma Window.

I abolutely agree. I design soley on my MacBook 14" and need EVERY pixel available. Having that huge gap around the paneles might “look” great but in reality it’s not.

Also I want to be able to hide each panel INDIVIDUALLY.

I used dev tools to remove the gaps. This would be my prefered layout.

Overall I like a lot of the UI3 changes, but one I struggle with is the undocked appearance of the left and right panels, where work bleeds in around the panel edge.

It is really quite distracting to see your work peeking through this area, especially when scrolling around. I wish we could dock the panels flush to the edge of the browser like in UI2 (maybe there’s a way of doing this, but I couldn’t find it).

I really hope this changes before UI3 becomes permanent!

I fully get the designers idea on floating panels, it looks super cool. And I admire the light weight look of the overall surface. But as a heavy user the floating panels cause distraction form my content because they seek their own attention. The UI feels cluttered despite being cleaned. I vote for docked panels.

Very true. I also think that the spacing between the edges of the screen is much and should be reduced.