MMS • Almir Vuk
Article originally posted on InfoQ. Visit InfoQ
Earlier this month, Uno Platform released Preview 5 of its plugin for Figma, offering enhanced features for designers and developers. The latest version of the plugin allows the creation of custom colors, eliminating color limitations, and enables the import of Design Systems Packages (DSP) for sharing design system information across various tools and designs. Additionally, new controls such as Pips Pager and TabBar with vertical orientation, as well as the ItemsRepeater feature, offer even greater flexibility to create highly dynamic and interactive designs.
Uno Platform has introduced new features that provide users with enhanced flexibility in managing the themes and colors of their apps. These features empower users to customize their app’s visual appearance and tailor it to their unique preferences and brand identity, resulting in personalized and visually appealing user experiences.
The significant new feature is the Design System Package (DSP) importing, which allows users to create and save custom material color palettes that can be easily imported into the Uno Figma plugin to quickly change the app’s theme. This feature streamlines the process of applying consistent colors across different designs and layouts, providing greater control and flexibility in implementing colors in app designs.
In addition, Uno Platform has added a custom color feature that eliminates restrictions on the number of colors used in a design, enabling designers and developers to create colors that suit their specific requirements. This feature offers designers greater creative freedom to create unique and customized color schemes that enhance the overall design aesthetic.
This Preview 5 introduces three new controls, including the highly anticipated vertical-oriented TabBar. TabBar control provides developers and designers with the ability to toggle between horizontal and vertical navigation bars, making it especially valuable for designing tablet-format applications. With this feature, designers can offer improved usability by utilizing a vertical navigation bar that complements the larger screen size.
PipsPager is another new control in Preview 5. This dynamic and versatile element offers advanced functionality for creating interactive designs, allowing developers and designers to create paginated interfaces with rich features such as smooth transitions, animations, and gestures. With its customizable design, PipsPager is ideal for applications that require complex navigation and data manipulation.
Furthermore, Preview 5 introduces the ItemsRepeater control, a data-driven panel that offers a unique approach to displaying collections of items. The original release blog post delivers the following statement:
ItemsRepeater is not a complete control, but rather a flexible panel that provides a template-driven layout for displaying collections of data. It offers greater customization options, allowing designers to have full control over the visual appearance and behaviour of the repeated items, making it highly suitable for designing interfaces with complex data presentation requirements.
Preview 5 also brings two notable updates to its image preview and display features. The placeholder image has been refined to aid designers in creating more accurate visual representations of their designs, and the need to alter images to a random preview image generated by the plugin has been eliminated. Images will now appear in the plugin precisely as they are displayed in the Figma file.
The Uno Platform for Figma plugin is rapidly developing into a robust tool that facilitates the app development process for developers and designers. Its latest features empower users to take greater control of their design and development workflow, enabling them to quickly move from the design phase to development without encountering common obstacles. And lastly, in addition to the original release blog post, users can find the detailed YouTube video tutorial published by the Uno Platform team, the video provides step-by-step instructions on how to download and launch the plugin.