I was manually spacing every button and card in my designs, thinking auto layout was just for simple lists. Then a coworker showed me how nested auto layout can handle entire form layouts in under 10 clicks. Has anyone else had that forehead-slap moment where a basic feature finally clicked?
I used to stack frames inside frames inside frames for every little card layout in Figma. Thought that was just how you had to do it. Then last week I watched a 10 minute tutorial from some random UX guy on YouTube and he just used two nested auto layouts with padding and spacing. That was it. Felt like an idiot realizing I was making 8 layers when I only needed 3. The tipping point was when I tried to edit a button and had to click through 5 parent frames just to change the text. Now I keep it way simpler but my old files are a nightmare to revisit. Anyone else have a moment where they realized they were dragging around extra layers for no reason?
I spent 2 years manually spacing every element with pixel pushing. Thought I had control. Then a senior designer at a meetup in Austin showed me their auto-layout file and I felt stupid. It was so clean and responsive. Now I'm all auto-layout but some old habits die hard. Is auto-layout really always better or do you still switch to manual for certain layouts?
My entire navigation bar broke apart when I tried to resize a button because I had 17 nested frames and no one told me Auto Layout doesn't handle padding the way I thought it did, so now I'm just using manual constraints and honestly it's way easier, has anyone else hit this wall with Figma's auto frames?