I noticed something frustrating with the UI3 updates. The “Constraints” settings are hidden behind a tiny button within the Position section of the right sidebar. Maybe the Figma team felt like these settings were rarely used, but they are critical when you’re working with items that are absolutely positioned, and want to control how they resize relative to their parent.
It would be nice to see these settings surfaced at the top level when the selected item is either absolutely positioned within an auto-layout frame, or the child of a frame without auto-layout.
With this we can have the best of all world. For those who use it often it appears below the section where the button to trigger it is. For those who prefer a movable popup they can have it.
It also work in line with the new UI language where they are puttin title on the different sections in the inspector.
As example.
It means that pressed contrains button will show a section below. Looking exactly as the popup but always visible inside the inspector
Same goes for the corner radius. Before it was field inside the inspector now its a pop up.
Technically it should be easy as its the same layout and content as in the popup. They alread have the concept of sections anyway.
Sure it will be a longer panel. But for those who like it why not?
Also currently they are not consistent. There is a buttom for individual padding. Which just add fields. Why is that not a popup?
To make it worse you can only have ONE of this advanced properies panel open. Why? Also if you deselect the object and select it again those popup floating panels are gone so you need to press the button again.
Se attached how it would look with floating advanced property panels vs inline.
Heck for super users, one could even choose what setting to appear inline vs popup
This UI redesign is horrible step back in terms of usability. Im really disappointed in this update. Seems like Figmers been more focused on the way everything looks clean instead of handy. Big thumb down
This is a pretty important panel for setting the positioning of an element within a frame. And it was needed not only to enter data, but also to check it. Now a quick glance at Constraints won’t work, you’ll have to take a closer look. Yes the dropdown icon shows this setting, but it does it in grey, which doesn’t help.
How would I solve the problem? Would leave that panel visible in its entirety. Honestly, I don’t understand the Figma designers’ desire to combine everything and hide it. There’s no benefit to combining and hiding important panels. In any case, even in the new interface there are so many of these settings that they go into the scroll. So the point of this freeing up space is simply lost.
Okay, I understand the need to innovate, but why change something that already works? Every user uses that UI every day. There is no reason to hide elements or change positions. It’s really bad to use!
I also would love to see the constraints visible all the time, but I do not share the negativity in general.
I love how you can now minimize the sidebars and the bottom-toolbar is also a big plus for me (less mousetravel on big screens).
Things I don’t like are the extra click in the “interaction-context-menu” to change or read the state-props and the location of width/height of elements… I keep on searching where they are… they just don’t pop out or aren’t placed where I would look for them (even after spending some good hours working with it).
It’s a beta, so I hope the good bits stay and some changes will be done to mitigate some regression.
It’s odd. You can even adjust the panel to be wider if preferred. That would be a great opportunity to show more settings in full, like Contraints, but sadly not implemented.
Agree. I almost NEVER use the X and Y position, yet it takes up so much space right in the middle of the panel where my eyes go to by default.
The other thing is that depending on whether or not I have a component selected, the SAME SPOT is taken either by position OR by dimension – and they look freaking identical on first glance. I can’t count the number of times I’ve accidentally tried to use the position boxes when I wanted the dimensions.
I feel in general the new UI has zero sense of hierarchy at all and its really hard to tell one thing apart from another.
I’d never use the buttons to align my elements instead of Option+WASD, but I understand that maybe this is good for new users or people who are used to working in PowerPoint.
Although, what I wouldn’t agree on is that these buttons are more important or deserve their screen real estate more than the positioning constraint buttons.
This feels really weird and I’d like these options to be
a) more visible / scannable and
b) easier to change.
A cool additional feature would be a possibility to change a constraint to “Scale” with one click instead of selecting it from the dropdown.
