[bbx]

Having designed websites with Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator and Sketch, I absolutely love Figma and especially Auto Layout. I don't think people realise how annoying it was to design a list of repeatable items. There already was a concept of "smart object" or "component" that could be duplicated in instances with variations. But laying them out was really cumbersome: if one of the instance had a different height, it would mess up the design because all subsequent items would need to be repositioned. The gap between them was also not a value: it was just space that wasn't used, so you couldn't interact with this gap.

Auto Layout fixes all those issues: you have a list of items of variable height with a fixed gap. You can very easily add/remove/reorder items, without breaking your design. You can even make it wrap, with different column and row gaps, and thus replicate a flexbox layout with "flex-wrap: wrap".

Each item can either hug its contents, have a fixed width, or grow. That's essentially flex-shrink and flex-grow in Figma. So useful.

You'll also notice that prototypes have a "responsive" mode, and it's amazing how Auto Layout will easily adapt to _any_ screen dimension. If you create a data table with one column that "fills" the space, you have a responsive prototype right out of the box.

Also, you can now drag an Auto Layout and it will fill it with component instances and replace its text content, essentially allowing you to fill your design in seconds. Incredible.

If the author still wants to manually place frames around, they still can. Just use fixed dimensions frames, with fixed positioning. That's similar to using "position: absolute" in your CSS. It's just a different type of design. Nothing forces you to use Auto Layout.

[GenerWork]

I'm glad to see that someone else took issue with the Auto Layout part of this article. The shape, text, and grouping tools are all there and nothing is stopping anybody from using them to create new interfaces that have approximately zero auto snapping.

[sevenseacat]

I loved Illustrator way way back in the day when I was a poor student with a cracked version. I found it so easy to use!

Design software nowadays... oh boy