🛠 Day 328 - Sent Invitations 💌

Sent out five invites to try out the Plugin.

My friend hit a wall when he saw empty content.

I thought this might happen, but it was good to experience it through fresh eyes.

Now the focus is on onboarding XP

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 325-327 - User Testing 🧪

Braved the heat wave ☀️ and finally stopped procrastinating and got plugin install instructions done.

My first tester was my lovely gf. She found bugs 🙈. It was really good to get a fresh set of eyes on it.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 324 - Cleanup Done ✅

Finished cleaning up the layout. It's all working now well enough.

Time to stop procrastinating and write those instructions & invite the first few users.

Is anyone else putting off documentation? 🙈

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 323 - Layout & Cleanup 🧹

Before adding a few new pages and examples for the new plugin, I decided to clean things up.

I created a separate layout for the customer-facing app from Tailwind UI and internal-admin (for me) using Mantine.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 322 - Bugs Crushed 🐛🥾

0 bugs remain 🎉

8 bugs fixed (including 3 new ones)

One of them was figuring out what to do when you change pages. This was the simplest short-term solution I can think of.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 321 - Bug fixes 🐛

3 Bugs fixed, and 5 Left to go.

Added a select box to show what template is being used to avoid confusion.

Before this, I assumed you had a frame called "Template". If you didn't, it won't work. Small but important.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 320 - Build Fixed 😁

I ended up fixing my build minification by sticking to Vite & ESBuild and simply removing the --minify-syntax flag.

Trying to switch to Webpack was taking too long.

Now it is just bug fixes & prep for Alpha 🤩

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

Some people forget that #buildinpublic is about hmm, building 😁.

So go build stuff.

🛠 Day 319 - Publishing? 😱

After 4-weeks of hard work, it was time to figure out how to publish a Figma Plugin.

It is always the scariest moment; you depend on an opaque review process. I've gone through it with iOS and Android a few times.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 318 - Login DONE 🔐

Finished the simple firebase login for the figma extension.

Decided to only do password-based login to start. Login with google, etc can wait post launch.

All that is left now is to try and publish it.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 317 - Login

Started working on login to be able to publish the plugin and give access to a small group.

Frustratingly hit roadblocks, but I think I have a solution 😁.

Read on for technical details.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 315-316 - Frame Properties + Font Size

In short, added the ability to quickly create multiple sizes of the template and resize font 🤩.

I dare you to do this in Canva, Figma or any design tool.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 313-314 - Made it work again 🤩

Got the original concept I shared a few weeks ago work again 😁.

I've changed library Handsontable => AgGrid and re-arrange everything.

I also added settings ⚙️

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 312 - Cleanup 🧹

Tying up a few loose ends in the code and cleaning up.

Prepping for hooking things back up to Figma 😁

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 310-311 - Redemption?

I switched to AgGrid and got it to work the way I want 🥳 (mostly).

⌨️ Keyboard nav
➕ Add/Remove properties to control design
🧩 Smart components - color picker, image picker, etc
📑 Spreadsheet like controls

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 308-309 - The Struggle

After a lot of struggle got Handsontable to render custom cells.

It really shouldn't be this hard. The sad news is there are still bugs with it.

Going to try to switch to Ag-grid Enterprise.

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 307 - Choas 🙈

Still struggling with the Handson Table, I decided to try a few other options.

For now, I made it work.

📏 Resizable Window
🧩 Friendly Layer & Property names
☀️ Light / 🌙 Dark Mode

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic

🛠 Day 305-306 - Consulting / Teaching

I got a call from a CTO friend who runs a 100-person startup to join a brainstorming session with the CEO.

It was a blast; we set 3 short-term objectives and talked about a grander vision to rally the team.

#buildinpublic

🛠 Day 304 - Framework Battle ⚔️

Spent the day trying out three different UI Kits:

1. TailwindCSS/UI 💨
2. ChakraUI ⚡️
3. Mantine 🔵

Implemented the same login modal with light & dark mode with each.

#buildinpublic

🛠 Day 303 - Dark/Light Mode

Created a small test bed to run the plugin UI outside of figma.

This way I can quickly try new design ideas and see the results without opening/closing the plugin.

HMR I missed you! ♻️

@conceptual_so #buildinpublic