In Figma: How to specify layouts for CSS grid systems?

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Summary: I have seemingly hit a limitation in Figma when trying to make the columns behave akin to a CSS grid system. I would like to know if I have misunderstood Figma's built in capabilities, if there is a plug-in that solves the problem, if I have to create one Figma frame per CSS breakpoint (undesirable), or if there are other solutions.

Background: As an interaction/ UX designer, I would like to specify the responsiveness of a web based application, so that the front end developers know how the interface should appear at all browser widths. They implement in a CSS-based grid system similar to Bootstrap

So far, I failed in achieving what I want, and the most knowledgeable UX'ers in the company think I have hit a limitation in Figma's capabilities, but they are not certain.

Basically, what I want is this basic responsiveness, but column based. But as shown in this video, none of my experiments work.

I wonder if it boils down to this: If a Figma child element has:

  • horisontal constraint set to “Scale” and
  • vertical constraint set to “Hug contents”

Then the parent element cannot have:

  • vertical constraint set to “Hug contents”

Is this is a known limitation in Figma? If yes, are there plugins that solve this problem, or is it outside Figma's scope to offer this type of alignment with CSS-based grid systems? Obviously, it would be very beneficial if the solution also supports breakpoints.

P.S. I have asked which SE site that was most suitable for this question, and SO was the suggested site. The question was closed on UX.SE.

1 Answers

No, according to an answer on Figma's own forum, Figma's columns cannot behave akin to a CSS grid system, even though “several threads [have] requested [this] evolution”.

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