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:
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.
Whats also irritating is if you drag an element horizontally you have to drag to the edge of the screen now, not just to the edge of the project frame 
This looks great!
Can you test if they are truly docked, by pressing “Shift+R” to show the ruler? The left ruler should appear at the right of Panel 1 just like in the Old Figma UI.
If floating panels are actually “floating,” then I should be able to reposition them: personalize a workspace for working on Banners, with all panels in a strip below my work, or a workspace for Mobile apps where maybe I put all my panels to the same side. Or, have only the Properties visible, and hide the Pages/Layers panel. Current implementation only gives the visual appearance with none of that kind of open-ended functionality.
Otherwise, I could really use the extra pixels, especially when I have to work on Laptop.
They are in this Uncanny Valley of “Floating” but with some “Docked” behaviors.
It affects how I see stuff in the workspace, how I select objects in the workspace, and it even shows the Ruler in the very weird way.
100% agree with this. The floating panels are the most annoying thing about the new design. Just dock them! There’s no advantage having them floating around with dumb corner radius.
I agree. Plus, space is lost to the floating panels’ margins, which matters when working on my MacBook screen.
Hey All, thanks for the feedback!
We’ll pass this onto the UI3 team for future improvement.
Overall, I feel like placement of controls in UI3 makes a lot of sense. One thing that is absolutely driving me nuts is the panel gaps on the left and right panels.
When I’m working on my laptop and not an external screen, it feels like a huge waste of space. If anything the little bit of content that shows between the panels and the edge of the screen makes the entire UI more cluttered.
Please attach/dock the left and right panels so they are flush against the edges of the screen like they were in UI2.
This is a big usability problem I have with floating panels right now. I hope Figma would understand this problem and address it.
At least give the users an option to dock the panels for real.
Hey @Sam_Solomon, thank you for your feedback!
I’m going to merge your post with UI3 Feedback to get more reach.
Its really hard to find usage for this small paddings, although still interactive, mostly creating noise
I like what Figma have done, their new approach. Just click on the below icon.
This is possible in the old UI too, just press ctrl + \
