What Figma’s Dev Mode Means for Developers
As a developer collaborating with designers on product development, you’ll face various challenges that can hinder effective teamwork. Many of these issues arise from limited involvement in the design process or incomplete design assets.
Figma has introduced Figma Dev Mode to address these issues, aiming to support seamless design-development collaboration.
How will this affect your workflow as a developer? Delve into Figma Dev Mode, explore its features, and discover best practices for its use.
What Is Figma Dev Mode?
Figma, the popular interface design tool, is popular with teams building prototypes or creating website mockups. Its Dev Mode, which the company announced at Config 2023, aims to serve as a developer workspace after the creators realized how difficult it was for them to interact with the Figma canvas.
Dev Mode is similar to the inspect tool in Chrome but it conveys a designer’s intent in a more familiar language.
Figma’s Dev Modeoffers a range of features, including inspect, code snippets, plugins, design systems, section status, and the ability to compare changes. These features should help to enhance communication, streamline processes, and maintain a consistent design-to-development workflow.
Currently, Dev Mode is in beta; you can access it using either your web browser or the Figma desktop app.
Seamless Communication With Dev Mode
When you access design files, the contents can look like a multiverse of panels, filled with design terminologies that may be difficult to comprehend, and you may not even know where to start. With just the toggle of a button, you materialize into a space that feels more familiar to you.
Image Credit:Figma
The navigation panel is less cramped with dropdown menus containing multiple frames and layers that expand to showcase different sections. This new version is much more organized.
Another great feature you may notice is the timestamp indicating the last edit. You can view the edit details by checking the compare changes option in the Inspect panel. It means you can see and keep track of changes made, similar to version history, a concept suited for your vocabulary.
The Inspect panel presents information relevant to you using language you understand: code. You can inspect elements andadd plugins better suited to your work. Dev Mode offers various interaction features, allowing you to share your ideas and suggestions at different points. These features include cursor chat, comment block, audio chat, and a share button.
These features enable concurrentdesign-development collaboration, as feedback occurs in real time within the same environment. As a result, it improves productivity and accelerates your workflow.
Efficient Asset Extraction
It is not uncommon for designers to provide incomplete design assets, which can be frustrating. Developers value resources and component availability to ensure build efficiency. With Dev Mode, asset extraction is as easy as a few clicks.
Whenever you select a frame, the inspect panel displays a list of the assets used. It also makes them readily available for download in four different formats.
This tool allows you to access assets without having to go back and forth with the design team. This helps to avoid errors or confusion, helping you save time and allowing you to focus on other tasks.
Simplified Handoff Processes
Dev Mode is the best package for handling handoffs. It combines everything you need in a single location that you can tailor to your workflow. Dev Mode helps to speed up the handoff process by enabling:
Best Practices and Tips for Using Dev Mode
You can use Figma’s Dev Mode as part of your workflow, but how can you make the most of it? Try these suggestions.
Embrace Dev Mode to Streamline Your Workflow
Figma Dev Mode should make your workflow more efficient, enabling better designer-developer collaboration with necessary features.
There are more parts to the Figma ecosystem, and the app’s popularity means it’s a valuable tool you can bring from job to job.
This is an online space for free-form interactions and carrying out the earliest design stages.
Some subscriptions are worth the recurring cost, but not these ones.
It’s not super flashy, but it can help to keep your computer up and running.
Free AI tools are legitimately powerful; you just need to know how to stack them.
You’re not getting the most out of what you pay for iCloud+.
Sometimes the smallest cleaning habit makes the biggest mess.
